Is a 302 redirect the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page?
-
Hi guys
The widely followed SEO best practice is that 301 redirects should be used instead of 302 redirects when it is a permanent redirect that is required.
Matt Cutts said last year that 302 redirects should "only" be used for temporary redirects.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more
For a site that I am looking at the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool lists as an issue that the URL / redirects to www.abc.com/Pages/default.aspx with a 302 redirect.
On further searching I found that on a Google Support forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276539078ba67f48&hl=en) that a Google Employee had said "For what it's worth, a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page (such as from "/" to "/sites/bursa/"). This is one of the few situations where a 302 redirect is preferred over a 301 redirect."
Can anyone confirm if it is the case that "a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page"? And if so why as I haven't found an explanation.
If it is the correct best practice then should redirects of this nature be removed from displaying as issues in the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool
Thanks for your help
-
Hi Lewis,
We're going through old, unanswered questions and wondering what you ended up doing here and if you have any results to share with us (such as changing from a 302 to a 301 and seeing rankings change, etc.).
Thanks!
-
I don't see anything wrong with just a 301..?
-
If you are planning to put the content on the deep page very soon on the home page, you may use a 302. If this is not the case, you have to 301.
-
Disagree with that, the only case when this could be used is the following case :
Service in unavailable (503) for any reason, and you can't display a 503 on the homepage. In this case this could make sense to 302 to another page displaying a 503, because your home page will soon be back.
-
Hi James, I don't want the redirect, the content is where it is due to the way the site has been set up in the past, long before anyone thought about SEO for the site.
I just wanted to make sure that if it has to be a redirect then it is the correct type of redirect after my advice that it should be a 301 redirect was questioned and it was suggested to me that a 302 should be used in this circumstance.
Thanks for your response.
-
I don't understand why you want the redirect at all? Why not put the final content on the home page.
Regardless, I don't agree that 302 should be used in this circumstance (no matter what a "google employee" says!) - it's a "temporary redirect" - is this temporary?
IMO, all redirects should be there to fix a specific problem - stop 404's, fix canonical problems, etc.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
After you remove a 301 redirect that Google has processed, will the new URL retain any of the link equity from the old URL?
Lets say you 301 redirect URL A to URL B, and URL A has some backlinks from other sites. Say you left the 301 redirect in place for a year, and Google had already replaced the old URL with the new URL in the SERPs, would the new URL (B) retain some of the link equity from URL A after the 301 redirect was removed, or does the redirect have to remain in place forever?
Technical SEO | | johnwalkersmith0 -
How do I redirect old html pages to new site?
Im seeing in my Google search console some of my old html pages. I never redirecting them and now they get 404 errors. Below is my current htaccess file, how would I changed it so that any html page i.e. intercallsystems.com/index.html forwards to my new site intercallsystems.com ? I have about 5 html pages that I want to redirect. Thank you for the help! Rena Currently my htaccess says: BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | palila
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress0 -
What to do with a 302 redirect after a while
Hi guys, A client of ours has a website with a very bad linkprofile. We adressed this issue and we migrated the website to another domain. We redirected the bad website (cornelisbedding.be) to the new domain (cornelisbedding.com) with a 302 redirect. We didn't want to pass the bad link juice. The problem we are having now is that we can't afford to lose the redirect on cornelisbedding.be. We would lose to much traffic because the old domain still has alot of links that generate good quality traffic. I have read that Google will treat 302 redirects as 301's in the long run. We really want to avoid this.
Technical SEO | | Jacobe
We were thinking of using a meta refresh with a delay on, but in Google's eyes that would be considered spammy. Are their any other suggestions on how to handle this? Thanks you!0 -
How to Remove Old Comment Page Query String URLs
I used to use a comments program on my website that created comment pages in the form of http://www.example.com/web-page.htm?comm_page=2. When I switched to a new comments program, I worried that these old comment URLs would be considered duplicate content. I created a 301 redirect that, for example, would redirect http://www.example.com/web-page.htm?comm_page=2 to http://www.example.com/web-page.htm and disallowed them in robots.txt, which I later learned was not the thing to do.. I have removed the URLs from being disallowed in robots.txt. However, many months later, these comment page URLs keep appearing in Google's index from time to time. I use the "Remove URLs" tool in Google Webmaster Tools to remove the URLs from Google's index, but more URLs appear a few days later. How can I get rid of these URLs for good? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MrFrost0 -
Change in url structure - added category page
I have recently started an e-commerce website and have now changed the url structure and added another level to my category pages. So where it before was www.website.com/shirts it is now www.website.com/clothes/shirts. So I added the clothes category (just an example) before the shirt category and am now finding that the old url is still found in the search index and is still live on my site. How could this be? I use wordpress and simply change the urls in the backend. The products are still under www.website.com/product/blue-shirt-123 so they won't be affected but I suppose it now means I have duplicate category pages? So my question is: Should I 301 the the old category page (www.website.com/shirts)to the new url (www.website.com/clothes/shirts). And how can the old url still be live on my site? If this was a bit unclear, please let me know. Appreciate your replies!
Technical SEO | | bitte0 -
What are the impact of doing URL Rewriting instead of 301 redirections whille optimizing a blog?
In WordPress, with the ALL In ONE SEO pluggingm we've optimze the permalinks to show more keewords in the URL'. What can be the impact?
Technical SEO | | webit400 -
Any issues with lots of pages issuing 301 redirects?
Hi all, I'm working on a site redesign and it is possible the new site could issue a lot of 301 redirects as we may migrate from one forum solution to another. Is there any issue with crawlers getting a lot of 301 redirects from a site? Thanks Nick
Technical SEO | | nickswan0 -
How should 301 redirects affect Page Authority?
We recently setting up 301 redirects from one of our sites so that the site redirects from the www version to the non-www version for all pages. We want to quantify what we expect to see as results. From what the experts say, we'd expect that the Page Authority of the canonical versio (non-www) will be higher than either of the two separate ones were previously. For instance, if this page - www.website.com/information/ - had a PA of 57 and this one - website.com/information/ - had a PA of 53, some time after the 301 redirects from www to non-www have been put into place, we should see the non-www version of that page move up to some PA about 57. It our thinking correct? How long does it normally take to see a PA update take place in a scenario like this? Thanks, Richard
Technical SEO | | LDS-SEO0