302 Redirect Answer From Google – Below is an exert from Matt Cutts blog (head internet guy at Google) discussing the 301 redirect and 302 redirect status code.

Q: Time out. I’ve got a question. What’s the deal with 302 redirect vs. 301 redirect? What does that mean? What’s the difference between 301 redirect and 302 redirect?

A: The “302″ redirect status code refers to the HTTP status codes that are returned to your browser when you request a page. For example, a 404 page is called a “404″ status code because web servers return a status code of 404 to indicate that a requested page wasn’t found.

The difference between a 301 redirect and a 302 redirect is that a 301 redirect status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location, while a 302 redirect status code means that a page has temporarily moved to a new location. For example, if you try to fetch a page http://example.com/ and the web server says “That’s a 301 redirect. The new location is http://www.example.com/” then the web server is saying “That url you requested? It’s moved permanently to the new location I’m giving you.”

Although Matt goes on to say that on-domain the 302 redirect SHOULD be handled by Google correctly now, meaning that it should figure out to show the front page instead of the redirected on-domain name but I believe there is no reason to leave this in Googles hands and the best practice would be to just show the root level home page.

No related posts.

Comments are closed