Search engines have a different approach to handling 302 redirects than the more common 301s.
In this article, I’ll dig into 302 redirects and when to use them appropriately. We’ll discuss what 302 redirects are, why they’re used, and what happens when you apply them to permanent page moves.
What You’ll Learn:
- What is 302 Redirect?
- 301 vs. 302 Redirects: Understanding the Differences
- When to Use 302 Redirects
- How Do 301 and 302 Redirects Impact SEO?
- Why Google Cares Whether You Use 302 vs. 301 Redirects
- How to Monitor Your Redirects
- FAQs on 302 Redirects
What is 302 Redirect?
A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect used to redirect website visitors and crawlers to a temporary page. Website owners should only implement 302 redirects if they are planning on restoring the original page.
This type of redirect doesn’t pass domain authority to the new location. Instead, its purpose is to redirect website users to a new location so that they don’t have a “bad experience.” In other words, 302 redirects prevent users from encountering 404 pages, errors, and broken links during site maintenance, testing, and redesigns.
By contrast, a 301 redirect is used to inform searchers and crawlers that a page has moved permanently and ensure that they make it to the new destination.
Essentially, 301 redirects function like a change of address form you’d fill out when you move, while 302 redirects are more like asking your neighbor to take in your mail for two weeks while you’re on vacation.
Keep in mind that while a 302 redirect is useful for temporary redirecting, Google and other search engines could still wind up moving ranking signals to the redirected page over time. So, do redirects hurt SEO? They can if you use 302 temporary redirects long enough to the point where search engines begin to perceive the new page as the canonical page.
My Expert Opinion on the 302 Redirect
When you do a website redirect, you might tend to favor the more well-known 301 redirect, but this isn’t always the best option. Which one you use really comes down to when to choose temporary or permanent redirects for your website.
Generally, a 302 redirect is right for situations when you’re only making temporary changes to pages and content or for experimentation purposes. However, 301 redirects can be good when you’re in the process of a website migration or transfer that’s more permanent.
Knowing more about the difference between 302 and 301 redirect codes can help you decide on the right one for your strategy. In fact, they can help SEO in many cases as you continually optimize your strategy.
Now, let’s get more into 301 vs. 302 redirect options and when it’s best to use a temporary vs. permanent redirect for your site.
301 vs. 302 Redirects: Understanding the Differences
Take a closer look at 302 vs. 301 redirects and when to choose a temporary redirect or permanent redirect code.
301 Redirect: Permanent Redirection
A 301 redirect is a permanent type of redirect that you might use for the following key reasons:
- Rebranding and Domain Changes: If you’re planning on a rebrand or website migration, a 301 redirect will move people to that new site and transfer the SEO value of that original page to the new one.
- Consolidating Duplicate Content: Avoiding duplicate content is another motivation for using a 301 redirect, allowing you to consolidate content on multiple pages into a single canonical page.
- Fixing Broken Links: If a page no longer exists, you can use 301s to ensure people don’t encounter a 404 page, connecting that outdated link with a relevant existing alternative.
- Securing Your Website: You may also use 301s to move your website from HTTP to the more secure HTTPS, keeping all traffic going to the secure site.
To successfully complete a 301 redirect for your site, there are also some guidelines to follow to maximize SEO value and keep the user experience as it should be.
For instance:
- Map old URLs to their new desired destinations before completing the process, which will prevent you from overlooking any pages.
- Only use these redirects when making a permanent change, opting for a 302 temporary redirect instead if you want a temporary alternative.
- Ensure all 301s go to the most relevant pages, such as connecting old product pages to similar products or product category pages.
302 Redirect: Temporary Redirection
While 301s are suitable for permanent web page redirects, you may instead opt for a status code 302 redirect for situations when you only want to redirect people away from a page for a limited time.
So, to reiterate, the main difference between 301 and 301 redirects boils down to when to choose a temporary redirect or permanent redirect option.
Some 302 redirect examples might include:
- Performing Website Maintenance: When making changes to an existing page, you might redirect people to a “coming soon” page or something similar to let people know the page won’t be gone for long.
- Testing New Pages: When considering launching a new page to see how it performs compared to the original, you would want to use a 302 vs. 301 redirect for SEO purposes, as the 302 could keep that first page’s SEO value intact in the event you revert back to it.
- Redirecting to Limited-Time Offers or Events: Want to redirect visitors to a page promoting a particular seasonal event or offering? A 302 could help with these promotions without hurting your SEO.
- Product Restocking: If you’re temporarily out of a particular product, a 302 could be useful in directing customers toward an alternative product until you’re able to restock the first product.
Remember, when considering using a 302 vs. 301 redirect, 301 redirects immediately pass most, if not all, of a page’s SEO value and link equity to the new page. And while 302s don’t typically hurt your SEO, they could if you leave them in place for too long—i.e., make sure your 302s are truly temporary to avoid transferring SEO value over an extended period.
When to Use 302 Redirects
Since most page moves are permanent and 302s don’t pass page rank to the new page, there are few situations where a 302 is actually the best choice for redirecting traffic.
Let’s look at a few scenarios where you might temporarily reroute certain pages on your website.
Website Redesigns & Updates
If you’re making changes to your website–be it a content refresh or a full-on redesign–it might be worth redirecting visitors to a version of the original page while you sort things out.
Country Redirects
One of the more common use cases for 302 redirects is to ensure that users land on the version of the site that corresponds to their native language/region.
However, when using 302 redirects for geotargeting and geofencing purposes, it’s important to implement them carefully to avoid potential SEO conflicts with other variations of a particular page.
To avoid these issues, make sure that users can easily switch languages or regions and that search engine bots can effectively crawl and index each iteration of a page.
A/B Testing
302 redirects are also a good solution for brands conducting A/B testing on high-traffic web pages. You might implement the temporary redirect while you run your experiment and collect feedback before committing to changes.
The 302 code will ensure that this “downtime” doesn’t impact the rankings associated with the original page.
E-Commerce Page Updates
302 redirects are a great way for e-commerce brands to ensure that out-of-stock or out-of-season product pages don’t compromise the user experience. For retailers, 302s presents a timesaving solution, particularly when you’re working with thousands of SKUs at a time.
Here, you can redirect users to another section of your website such as a category page or a similar product to encourage them to check out other products, and ideally, make a purchase.
The 302 lets Google crawlers know that this page is offline temporarily, and therefore, its value should remain intact when the product is back in stock and open to visitors.
Compared to 301 pages (if you’re curious how to do this, Google introduces the process here), a 302 redirect can be set up with a meta tag or Javascript, as well as several tools such as
- Site builders like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, etc.
- SEO Redirection (WordPress Plugin)
In this case, there’s no need for the webmaster to access your server files or spend additional time rerouting pages with a 301 redirect.
How Do 301 and 302 Redirects Impact SEO?
Both 301 and 302 codes are HTTP status codes that belong to the 3xx class in the official HTTP status code registry. Any code that begins with the number three belongs to the redirecting class.
But as I’ve mentioned above, not all redirects are created equal. And that disparity between the 301s and the 302s primarily boils down to “link juice,” or the SEO value you’ve built for a particular page.
Essentially, pages with permanent 301 redirects get to keep their link equity post-move, and search engines are more likely to reindex the redirected page faster.
Meanwhile, search engines typically interpret 302 redirects as a temporary change that won’t stick, signaling to bots to maintain the current link equity and page rankings for the original page. The idea is, once you’ve removed the directive, any rankings, authority, and traffic value associated with the old page will remain intact.
In most cases, 301s are your best bet for redirecting your website traffic.
When URLs are properly redirected to the new page, you maintain your SERP rankings and link equity—which means you don’t need to start from scratch to regain lost visibility. 301s also prevent your old page from competing with the new one.
While there’s no fixed cut-off time to change from a 302 to a 301 redirect, you probably should do it sooner rather than later. Because, unfortunately, when you don’t use each redirect properly, it can open your website up to serious technical SEO issues that impact rankings and indexing.
While the user experience will probably remain the same no matter which codes you use, the reason that understanding how to use redirects appropriately comes down to how crawlers treat permanent moves versus temporary ones.
Using a 302 when the situation calls for a 301 can cause problems for search engines when crawlers try to determine which page is a higher value.
Why Google Cares Whether You Use 302 vs. 301 Redirects
Google is used to webmasters applying 302 redirects to 301 scenarios. In fact, Google’s John Mueller has said just that in the past.
Long-term redirect abuse can compound over time. The reason is, when both the temporary and original pages are indexed, the Googlebot is forced to make a decision to ensure that only one version appears in the SERPs.
As a result, this means that there’s a good chance that the search engine will list the wrong page. When 302s are used for multiple permanent redirects, they miss out on any value that those pages would have accrued since the change was implemented.
At the end of the day though, I wouldn’t stress too hard over 301 v. 302 redirects, especially if you’re in that holding pattern that occurs when you’re redesigning a page, performing A/B testing, or waiting for more stock to come into your ecommerce store.
How to Monitor Your Redirects
Checking that all redirects are applied correctly is relatively easy. If your website doesn’t have a ton of pages, you can check your redirects by entering the complete URL of the original page and observing what’s happening on the page.
Check for 404 Errors
If the redirect is implemented correctly, you’ll see the response code–302 or 301. Perhaps more importantly–at least from a user-experience perspective is making sure all redirects are set up correctly so that visitors don’t run into 404 errors.
While 404 codes aren’t redirects, they’re designed to let users know that a webpage has been removed from a website, but links to that page still remain.
To find 404 errors, log into your Google Search Console account and navigate to the coverage section in the left-hand column. Then click the 404 section to quickly identify any URLs that result in this error.
Track Page Performance
While KPIs such as the number of page visits, amount of time spent on a page, and bounce rate are always an important part of monitoring your digital marketing performance, they become even more important when you’re monitoring your redirect activity.
If you’ve recently set up a redirect, keeping an eye on these KPIs will tell you whether the redirects are working or not. If visitors are finding the page that you’re trying to redirect away from, that means it’s not set up or working properly.
Best Tools for Checking Redirects
That said, ID-ing every 302 and 301 isn’t quite as easy if you have a large website with multiple pages and frequent updates.
In this article, I go over a “big list” of SEO analysis tools you might use to find technical SEO issues, but here are a few options particularly useful for spotting bad redirects.
- SEMrush: SEMrush is an all-in-one solution that comes with a robust set of auditing tools, including the ability to identify redirect chains and loops and fix any problems from inside the platform.
- ScreamingFrog: ScreamingFrog can crawl your website with its built-in redirect checker, which allows users to filter by response code, check internal redirect chains and loops, and bulk export your findings.
- Moz: Like SEMrush, Moz offers several SEO reporting and research tools, including the ability to crawl and audit your website for technical issues. Users receive alerts for new issues, along with an explanation of what it is and how to fix it.
- RedirectChecker.org: A no-frills web-based tool that allows users to check their websites for 301 and 302 redirects, redirect chains, HTTP headers, meta refresh & java redirects.
- Redirection: Redirection is a WordPress plugin that allows WP users to manage 301s, spot 404s, and quickly clean up any redirect problems hiding out in the depths of your website.
FAQs on 302 Redirects
1. What is a 302 redirect?
A 302 redirect is a code that lets a search engine know that a website or page has temporarily moved to another URL.
2. What is the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect, whereas a 302 is a temporary one. When you set up a 301 redirect, you’re telling Google and other search engine crawlers that this page has permanently moved. A 302 redirect tells them that the page has moved temporarily but that it will be back in the near future.
3. Are 302 redirects bad news for your SEO?
Do redirects hurt SEO? Not necessarily but they can be. You should get into the habit of using the correct redirect codes in the situations where they’re needed but if you use a 302 instead of a 301 once in a while, it’s not the end of the world.
Decide on a Temporary vs. Permanent Redirect With the Help of Ignite Visibility
If you’re not sure whether to use 302 vs. 301 redirects, it all depends on whether your application is either permanent or temporary.
Knowing more about the effects of a 302 vs. 301 redirect on SEO can help you decide which to use. The experts here at Ignite Visibility could also help you make the right choice based on your goals.
When you turn to the pros at Ignite, you can get help with:
- Figuring out when to use a 301 or 302 redirect
- Website design and development that optimizes for SEO and user experience
- Handling website transfers that might incorporate 301.
- Developing a comprehensive SEO strategy
- And more!
If you like how that sounds, reach out to us today and discover what our team can do for you.
