301 or 302 The One Question That Chooses the Right Redirect

Use a 301 when the destination is the new permanent home. Use a 302 when the diversion is temporary and the original URL is supposed to return. The choice is not about which status code has more “SEO power”. It is about which future the organisation is willing to maintain.

One question settles most ordinary cases:

If the answer is no, the move is permanent. If the answer is yes, the diversion is temporary. If nobody can answer, the redirect is not ready to be approved. I treat every redirect as a promise about the future. The status code is simply the machine-readable version of that promise.

Two codes, two futures

Google treats 301 and 308 as permanent redirect signals and may use the destination as the canonical URL shown in Search. It lists 302, 303 and 307 as temporary, and does not use a temporary response as a signal that the destination should replace the source (Google: redirects and Search). That difference is the whole decision.

The word “genuine” matters on the permanent side. Permanence does not rescue an irrelevant destination. Redirecting every discontinued product to the homepage may remove a 404, but it abandons the visitor’s original task. Choosing the destination is a content and journey decision. Choosing the status code is an intent decision. Do not let one conceal a failure in the other.

On the temporary side, every diversion should carry four operational facts: why it exists, who owns the decision, which event or date triggers review, and what the original URL should serve afterwards. Without those, “temporary” often means nobody was prepared to make the permanent decision. A technically functioning 302 can survive for years after its context has disappeared.

Duration does not decide permanence

A redirect does not become permanent after an arbitrary number of days. Intent decides the status. A building can remain temporarily closed for longer than expected while its established page remains the correct long-term address. A merged article is permanent from its first request even if search systems take time to process the change. Time still matters because temporary rules require review. It just does not answer the underlying question.

I use a Future-State Test with four prompts:

The table catches a common contradiction: the marketing team says a campaign page is temporary, but the business has no plan to restore the source. Or the developer chooses a 301 for maintenance because “it passes authority”, while everyone expects the original page back next week. The code should describe the operating decision, not overrule it.

Two approvals, not one

I separate two questions that are frequently bundled together. Status approval asks whether the move is permanent or temporary; it chooses the response family. Destination approval asks whether the target continues the user’s task closely enough; it protects the journey.

For a permanent consolidation, compare source and destination by purpose, audience, offer, location, product state and decision. A broad thematic resemblance is not enough. For a temporary diversion, check whether the substitute tells the visitor what changed, which limitations apply and how to continue. Sending an unavailable local service page to a national homepage preserves uptime while creating confusion.

A redirect map that records only old URL and new URL is therefore incomplete. Add the source task, the future-state decision, the relationship to the target and the approving owner. That small amount of context prevents mechanically “successful” migrations that lose the website’s meaning.

Redirects, canonicals and noindex do different jobs

A redirect sends a request elsewhere. A canonical annotation identifies a preferred accessible version among duplicate or similar URLs. A noindex directive asks compliant search engines not to index a page. Google describes redirects and rel="canonical" as strong canonicalisation signals and advises against conflicting methods (Google: consolidating duplicate URLs).

• Do not use noindex to imitate a migration that needs users to reach a new address.
• Do not redirect a page merely because another page discusses a similar subject while both still serve distinct decisions.
• Do not redirect requests in one direction while declaring a canonical in another.

My rule is that every control should answer one clear problem. When a team needs three conflicting controls to express the intended state, the intended state probably has not been decided. Forms, APIs, checkouts and authentication flows add a further wrinkle: 303, 307 and 308 carry request-method behaviour that affects submitted data, caching and security. Do not change those from an SEO spreadsheet. The developer responsible for the application must confirm the expected method and consequences.

The live response is the evidence

An admin screen shows what somebody intended to configure. The server response shows what users and crawlers receive. For every priority rule, test:

• The source returns the intended status
• The Location header names the correct destination
• The destination returns a healthy final response
• No loop or avoidable chain appears
• Query strings are preserved or removed deliberately
• Protocol, hostname, case and trailing-slash variants behave consistently
• The final page remains indexable when it should appear in Search
• Internal links point directly to the final maintained URL

Pattern rules need variant testing. One tidy demonstration URL cannot prove how the rule handles uppercase paths, parameters, encoded characters or routes that merely resemble the intended source. A 301 that lands successfully on the wrong task is still a failed migration decision.

Give every temporary redirect a return plan

The most useful 302 audit is not a list of temporary redirects. It is a list of temporary redirects whose reason, owner or exit can no longer be explained. Record the source, destination, purpose, owner, implementation date, expected return state and review trigger. At review, choose one outcome: remove the redirect because the original page is back, retain it with a new evidence-based review point, or replace it with a permanent redirect because the destination has genuinely become the new home.

Do not automatically convert every old 302 to a 301. First establish what users now expect and which page the organisation will actually maintain. Age is evidence that a decision is overdue. It is not evidence of what the decision should be.

The one-minute redirect approval

Before release, require six answers. If they are coherent, the code usually becomes obvious. If they conflict, changing the number will not solve the underlying problem.

A 301 says the address has changed. A 302 says the route has changed for now. Choose the future first, verify the live promise, and let the status code describe the decision.