Redirect (301/302)

The distinction matters for SEO because a 301 redirect passes the vast majority of the original URL's link equity and ranking signals to its destination, making it the correct choice for permanent moves (a URL restructure, a domain migration, a merged page), while a 302 is meant for genuinely temporary situations (an A/B test variant, a temporary maintenance redirect) and historically was treated as not passing equity in the same way, though Google has clarified it treats a 302 similarly to a 301 if the redirect persists long enough to appear effectively permanent. A common, costly mistake is leaving a 302 in place indefinitely for what was actually meant to be a permanent change, or building redirect chains (URL A redirects to B, which redirects to C) that add unnecessary latency and can dilute signal strength — every redirect should point directly to its final destination, not through an intermediate hop.

Example

A site migration correctly uses 301 redirects from every old URL directly to its new equivalent, avoiding redirect chains by updating each old redirect to point straight to the final destination rather than through an intermediate now-obsolete URL.

Related terms

• Redirect Chain
• Broken Link
• Site Migration
• HTTP Status Code
• Link Equity
• Crawler