The Search Marketing Advisor Newsletter Article:
May 2005, Volume 4, Issue 5

Lost Along the Way: Using 301 and 302 Redirects by Sarah McCracken, Algorithmic Team Leader, iProspect

Sometimes it is necessary to change the URL of a website. Imagine the URL is the street layout in the example above. While there are many ways to convey the new location of the site to both search engine spiders and Internet users, the most common way is through simply redirecting the old URL to the new one. This allows both humans and machines to easily “find their way” to the new location without getting lost.

However, for this to be successful, and to mitigate the risk of losing your search engine visibility during this change, it is imperative to employ 301 redirects instead of 302 redirects. Now, what’s the difference between a 301 and a 302?

301 and 302 Redirects Defined

301 and 302 redirects are both status codes which you can employ to be returned when a specific page (a URL that no longer exists) is requested by either a Web browser or a search engine spider.

The 301 redirect indicates that the requested page has permanently moved to a new URL and any future reference to that page should return the new URL.

The 302 redirect indicates that the requested page has temporarily moved to a new URL.

These methods appear virtually identical to users — as they will be brought to the new location either way. But the difference between the two is important when it comes to search engine spiders. Both redirects allow spiders to find new pages on your site without encountering the dreaded 404 status code (page not found). The 301 redirect informs the spider to remove the old address from the search engine’s index and to index the new address in its place. The 302 redirect simply informs the spider that the old address has temporarily moved.

Avoid Using 302 Redirects

Google makes it clear within their guidelines that they prefer 301 redirects when a page has been permanently moved (http://www.google.com/remove.html.) But what could really happen if you use a 302 instead of a 301?

• The spider could choose to index only one of the two URLs. There is no way to determine whether the spider will choose the new or old address, so the wrong page could very well be indexed by the search engines, and be served to potential customers when they click on your site in the search results.
• The spider could choose to drop both URLs out of the search engine’s index entirely. If they recognize the old address as being no longer valid, and the new address as being only temporary, they may determine that it is not a site worth keeping in their index.
• Pages with 302 redirects could lose all their link popularity by losing all of the links that point to them from other websites. Google, MSN and other search properties utilize link popularity as an important component in how pages rank in the search results.
• The easiest way to give both users and spiders clear directions to the new locations of pages on your site is to employ 301, permanent redirects. This will reduce the risk of both getting lost along the way, ending up in the wrong place altogether, or losing your rankings on those pages.

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