301 vs 302 Redirects: When to Use Each

A 301 status code tells the browser and the crawler: 'this URL has permanently moved; update your bookmarks and your index.' A 302 says: 'this URL has temporarily moved; come back to the original URL later.' Browsers cache 301s aggressively (often indefinitely) and rarely cache 302s. Crawlers treat 301 as a strong signal to drop the original URL from the index and consolidate signals onto the destination; 302 keeps the original URL in the index.

Google has documented that since around 2016 the ranking-signal transfer for 301 and 302 is more similar than it used to be (Google Search Central, 2016) — but the indexing behaviour still differs substantially.

Use 301 whenever the move is permanent — which covers the vast majority of redirects you'll ever set up.

• Site migrations (old domain → new domain).
• HTTPS upgrade (http://example.com → https://example.com).
• Trailing-slash normalization (example.com/page → example.com/page/).
• WWW vs non-WWW canonicalization.
• Consolidating duplicate or cannibalizing pages.
• Removing an old page in favour of a new one on the same topic.

Use 302 only when the move is genuinely temporary and the original URL is expected to return.

• A/B testing where users are temporarily routed to a variant page.
• Geo-redirects where users are temporarily routed based on location (with the original page still authoritative).
• Maintenance pages where the original URL will be back online shortly (consider 503 instead).
• Promotional landing pages that will revert to the original URL after a campaign.

HTTP 307 is the modern HTTP/1.1 equivalent of 302 with one technical difference: 307 guarantees the request method (GET, POST, etc.) is preserved, while 302 historically did not. For SEO purposes Google treats 302 and 307 equivalently. Use 307 when you specifically need to preserve a non-GET request method (rare in SEO contexts).

Redirect chains (A→B→C→D) — each hop loses a small amount of ranking signal and slows page load. Aim for direct 301s. Redirect loops (A→B→A) — break the page entirely and get the URL deindexed quickly. Mixing 301 and 302 inconsistently across the site — particularly common after a botched migration where some URLs get permanent and others get temporary redirects.

The other common mistake is using a 302 'temporarily' for what's actually a permanent move because the developer thought 302 was 'safer.' This leaves the old URL competing with the new one in Google's index for months.