301 vs 302 Redirects: Which One to Use and When

A redirect sends anyone who requests one URL to a different one. The two you will use most are the 301 and the 302, and the difference between 301 vs 302 redirects is simply permanence: a 301 says “this has moved for good,” while a 302 says “this is temporary, come back to the original later.” Choosing the right one matters because search engines treat them differently, and the wrong choice can slow down or scatter your rankings.

What the status codes mean

Both codes are HTTP responses the server sends before the new page loads. A 301 is “Moved Permanently.” It tells browsers and search engines that the original URL is gone and the destination is now the real home of the content. A 302 is “Found,” historically “Moved Temporarily.” It tells them the detour is short-lived and the original URL should stay indexed because it will return. Users experience both identically — they just land on the new page — but crawlers act on the difference.

Browsers also treat the two differently under the hood. A 301 is cacheable by default, so a browser that has seen the redirect once may go straight to the destination next time without re-checking the server. That is efficient in production but can be frustrating during testing, because a 301 you set up by mistake can stick in your browser cache. A 302 is not cached the same way, which suits genuinely temporary detours where the original address needs to remain the one browsers remember.

301 vs 302 at a glance

When to use a 301

Use a 301 whenever the move is permanent. That covers migrating to a new domain, changing a URL structure, merging two pages, switching from HTTP to HTTPS, or retiring an old page in favor of a better one. Because a 301 passes ranking signals to the destination and gets the new URL indexed in place of the old, it is the default choice for almost every real-world redirect. When you consolidate several old URLs into one, a 301 is also part of how you fix duplicate content that lives at multiple addresses.

When to use a 302

Use a 302 only when the original URL genuinely will come back. Good cases include running a short-term A/B test where you send some traffic to a variant, showing a temporary maintenance or promotional page, or geo-routing a user for a moment while keeping the canonical URL in the index. The key question is simple: do you want the original URL or the destination to keep its rankings? If the answer is the original, a 302 is correct. If it is the destination, you want a 301.

In day-to-day work, genuine 302 cases are rarer than people assume. Many redirects that feel temporary — moving a seasonal landing page, tidying a URL you dislike, sending an old blog post to a newer one — are permanent in practice and deserve a 301. A useful test is to ask whether you realistically plan to restore the original URL. If you cannot name the date or event that would bring it back, treat the move as permanent and use a 301. When in genuine doubt, defaulting to a 301 is the lower-risk choice, because it protects the destination’s ranking signals rather than leaving them stranded on a URL you never actually revive.

Does a 301 redirect pass full SEO value?

In practice, yes. Google has stated that 301 redirects pass ranking signals and that no PageRank is lost through them. That said, redirects still have costs worth minimizing. Long redirect chains — URL A to B to C — waste crawl effort and slow users down, so redirect straight to the final destination. And a redirect only helps if it points to a genuinely relevant page; redirecting a deleted page to an unrelated one, or to the homepage in bulk, tends to be treated like a soft 404 and passes little value. The safest habit is one-hop redirects to the closest relevant replacement, reviewed periodically so old chains do not accumulate as your site changes over the years.

What happens if you use a 302 by mistake?

If you use a 302 for a move that is actually permanent, you tell Google to keep the old URL indexed and to hold ranking signals there. Google may eventually work out that the move is permanent and treat the 302 like a 301, but that is not guaranteed and can take time, during which your rankings may stall or split between the two URLs. Because the misconfiguration is invisible to users, it often goes unnoticed. Audit your redirects with a crawler to confirm each one returns the status code you intended.

Is a redirect the same as a canonical tag?

No. A redirect removes the original URL from service and sends everyone to the destination. A canonical tag keeps every URL live and viewable and only advises search engines which one to index. Use a redirect when a page has truly moved or should no longer be reachable; use a canonical when you need to keep duplicate URLs accessible but want ranking signals to gather on one master version. Getting redirects right is foundational technical SEO, and it pairs naturally with the fixes on any on-page SEO checklist.