hi, i’m amr. when a page moves, someone picks a redirect status code in a hurry, and most of the time it’s whichever one the plugin defaulted to. google’s documentation says the choice changes which url it treats as canonical.
what google says, in its own words
- “The 301 and 308 status codes mean that a page has permanently moved to a new location.” google’s indexing pipeline “uses the redirect as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical,” and the new target is shown in search results
- 302, 303 and 307 are listed as temporary. for those, the pipeline “doesn’t use the redirect as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical,” and the source page is shown
- an instant meta refresh (0 seconds) is interpreted as a permanent redirect. a delayed one (more than 0 seconds) is interpreted as a temporary redirect
- “Only use JavaScript redirects if you can’t do server-side or meta refresh redirects.” google runs javascript after crawling, “rendering may fail for various reasons,” so it might never see the redirect
my reading, not google’s wording: a campaign page that must stay in results should use a temporary code, and a page that has really moved should use a permanent one.
what to check this week
- crawl the redirects on your site and list the status code behind each one
- find permanent moves that return 302, such as a site migration where the old urls kept a temporary code
- find temporary pages, such as seasonal offers, that return 301 and may be treated as moved for good
- look for redirects done in javascript or with a delayed meta refresh, and replace them with a server-side redirect where you can
- redirects are one of the canonical signals google lists. i covered how it ranks them in an earlier post
where this stops applying
the page doesn’t say how many redirects in a chain googlebot will follow, or how long a redirect should stay in place, so this post gives no numbers on either. it makes no ranking claim. i haven’t audited any site, so treat the list above as a starting point.
start scaling — if a migration or a plugin left your redirects on the wrong status code, a short redirect audit will show where. let’s connect.
Sources: Google Search Central, “Redirects and Google Search” (developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/301-redirects). Figures are published product documentation, not verified results from Amr’s own client accounts.