302 Redirects (on domain)
Oct 18th, 2008 by admin
302 redirects are temporary redirects made via the HTACCESS.
Google treats 302 redirects differently depending if they are on-domain or off-domain. An often quoted example of an on-domain redirect is athletics.mlb.com which uses a 302 redirect to http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=oak. If you search for “oakland a’s” in Google you will see that athletics.mlb.com is displayed in the results because links point to that URL, which in turn uses a 302 redirect to the destination page. This is a great example where 302 redirects can be used effectively, since the shorter URL looks much more enticing in the results pages.
MSN treats 302 redirects exactly like a 301 redirects, it will always ignore the original URL and instead index the destination URL. A search for “oakland a’s” in MSN shows the URL oakland.athletics.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=oak in its results.
Yahoo takes the same stance that MSN takes, except that they reserve the right to make exceptions in handling redirects. A search for “oakland a’s” in Yahoo shows the URL www.oaklandathletics.com in its results. (www.oaklandathletics.com also uses a 302 redirect to http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=oak).
There are very few occassions when you’d actually want a 302 redirect. 302 redirects are often the default redirect in website control panels, and JavaScript or Meta redirects will produce a 302 status as well hence the main reason why they are more frequently used than 301 redirects.
The best uses of 302 redirects would be in the following scenarios:
1. You have a product/advertiser page that ranks which is fine if the offer is still valid, but if the offer is invalid because the advertiser’s balance has run low, stocks are depleted (although this should seldom happen in the age of EOQ), or quite simply the product is TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE, then you’d still want the url to retain its ranking and simply redirect the user to a similar product page but a different merchant or advertiser. Why not Javascript? Because that could be seen as cloaking.
2. Platform upgrades
Use 302 redirects to get the site through peak traffic / conversion season so that the old pages would still be found in the SERP’s while we worked to build rankings for the new pages. This tactic by and large worked for this particular situation. The old pages slowly drifted down in the SERP’s while we worked like mad to get the new pages to index and rank well. When the new pages began to challenge the old pages, which took about three months, we changed the 302’s to 301 redirects and focused completely on the new pages. Site traffic sank during the launch but didn’t take a deep dive during a critical traffic period.
This tactic might work for your website re-launch IF the new pages content is significantly different than the old pages and you are entering or in a peak traffic/conversion period or you cannot afford to buy the traffic to fill the traffic lost when your site re-launches. However based on experience I wouldn’t use 302 redirects unless it’s absolutely necessary to get through a few weeks of a peak traffic period.
Resources
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/