301 vs. 302 Redirect: Which One to Use, and How to Confirm It Worked in Search Console

Pick a 302 when a page move is actually permanent, and Google won't consolidate your rankings on the new URL, no matter how long the redirect stays live. That's the core tension in the 301 vs. 302 redirect decision: the two status codes handle ranking signals in almost opposite ways, and most guides stop at definitions without telling you how to confirm which one actually took effect.

Reviewed the top-ranking guides on this topic and cross-checked every claim against current Google Search Central documentation, including the unsourced link-equity percentages that keep circulating in older SEO content.

In this guide you'll decide which redirect type fits your situation, implement it correctly, and confirm in Search Console that Google actually processed it, not just that it works in a browser. Here's the workflow.

301 vs. 302 Redirect: Quick Answer

A 301 redirect tells browsers and search engines a page has moved permanently, and it transfers ranking signals to the new URL. A 302 redirect signals a temporary move, so Google keeps the original URL indexed and generally holds off on transferring those signals.

Who this guide is for: SEO practitioners and site owners who need to pick the right redirect type for a specific situation, and then confirm Google actually processed it, not just that it works in a browser.

How this guide was built: Cross-referenced against current Google Search Central documentation on redirects and canonicalization, and checked against the current Google Search Console interface for report labels and workflow steps.

What Is a 301 Redirect?

A 301 redirect is an HTTP status code meaning "Moved Permanently." When a browser or crawler requests a URL that returns a 301, the server tells it the resource now lives at a new address, for good.

Use a 301 when:

• You're migrating to a new domain
• You're restructuring URLs (changing slugs, folder structure, or CMS)
• You're moving your site to HTTPS or consolidating www/non-www versions
• You're merging two similar pages into one and retiring the old URL permanently
• You're permanently replacing a discontinued page with a close equivalent

Google's guidance is to keep a 301 redirect in place indefinitely, not just for a fixed window of time. Users and crawlers can request the old URL again months or years later (from an old bookmark, a stale backlink, or a cached search result), and removing the redirect early breaks that path.

What Is a 302 Redirect?

A 302 redirect means "Found," commonly read as "Moved Temporarily." It tells browsers and crawlers the move isn't permanent, so the original URL should stay in play.

Use a 302 when:

• You're running an A/B test and need traffic to temporarily land on a variant URL
• You're doing site maintenance and redirecting to a holding page
• You're testing a redesign or re-platform before committing to it
• You're running a seasonal or campaign page that will be reused later (like an annual sale page)
• You're routing by geography or device on a short-term basis

The practical trap: a 302 only behaves like a temporary signal if it's actually temporary. Leave one in place for months on a change you've already committed to, and you're just delaying the SEO benefit a 301 would have delivered from day one.

301 or 302? A Decision Framework

Most guides list use cases and leave you to pattern-match. A faster way to decide:

Core question: will the original URL ever serve this content again?

• No → use a 301. The move is permanent, so tell Google to consolidate signals on the new URL.
• Yes, or you're not sure yet → use a 302. Keep the original URL's signals in place until you commit.

A few edge cases worth naming directly:

• Redesign or re-platform rollout you plan to make permanent once tested. Use a 302 during the test window. Switch to a 301 the moment you commit, don't leave the 302 running "just in case."
• Merging near-duplicate pages for SEO cleanup. Always a 301. The goal is to fully retire the old URL, and a 302 won't consolidate the signals you're trying to combine.
• Seasonal pages that return every year (a Black Friday landing page, for example). Use a 302, since the URL gets reused rather than permanently retired.

If the change is likely permanent and you're still unsure, default to 301. It's the safer choice for consolidating ranking signals, and a wrongly-permanent 301 is easier to walk back than months of delayed signal consolidation from an overextended 302.

In practice: most redirect misconfigurations we see in GSC audits trace back to a 302 chosen out of habit for what was, in fact, a permanent change from the start.

How 301 and 302 Redirects Actually Affect SEO (Correcting a Common Myth)

You'll find specific "link equity" percentages floating around SEO content: some articles claim 301s pass 90-99% of ranking value, others claim you lose up to 15%. Neither figure comes from official Google documentation. Google's own guidance says a 301 passes "most" of the ranking signals to the destination URL, without committing to a fixed number.

The practically useful signal isn't a percentage anyway; it's whether Google has actually switched to treating your new URL as canonical. That's something you can check directly, which is the point of the verification section below, rather than something you estimate from an unsourced figure.

For 302s, Google generally treats the redirect as temporary and doesn't transfer ranking signals to the destination while it reads the redirect that way. That's by design; it's what makes a 302 the right choice for genuinely temporary moves. The mistake isn't using a 302, it's using one for a change that was never actually temporary. Doing that doesn't "protect" your rankings. It just delays Google from consolidating signals onto the URL you actually want ranking.

How to Implement a 301 or 302 Redirect

Server-level redirects are the right way to do this for SEO. Skip meta-refresh tags and JavaScript-based redirects; both are slower for users and less reliable for crawlers to follow.

Apache (.htaccess)

# 301 - permanent
Redirect 301 /old-page /new-page

# 302 - temporary
Redirect 302 /old-page /new-page

Nginx

# 301 - permanent
location /old-page {
    return 301 /new-page;
}

# 302 - temporary
location /old-page {
    return 302 /new-page;
}

WordPress and Other CMS Platforms

Plugins like Redirection or Yoast SEO handle both redirect types from a settings screen, and most default to 301 unless you explicitly pick otherwise. Shopify and other hosted platforms default their built-in URL redirect tools to 301 as well, since permanent moves are the far more common case on those platforms.

How to Confirm Your Redirect Worked in Google Search Console

This is the step nearly every redirect guide skips, and it's the one that actually tells you whether the redirect did what you intended.

Step 1: Confirm the status code first. Open your browser's DevTools Network tab, or run curl -I https://yoursite.com/old-page, and check that the response shows the status code and destination you expect. This confirms the server is doing its job.

Step 2: Check URL Inspection in GSC. Go to Google Search Console, open URL Inspection, and enter the old URL. Look at the "Google-selected canonical" field and the current indexed status.

Step 3: Run a Live Test. URL Inspection's indexed data reflects the last time Google crawled the page, which can lag behind reality. Click "Test Live URL" to see how Googlebot resolves the URL right now, separate from what's currently in the index.

Step 4: Watch it over the following weeks. For a 301, the old URL's entry in the Page indexing report should move to "Page with redirect," and eventually drop out of the indexed count entirely. In the Performance report, impressions and clicks should gradually shift from the old URL to the new one.

Set expectations before you check: this isn't instant. High-authority pages can update within days; lower-priority pages can take weeks. If your new URL isn't picking up traffic at all after a migration, our guide on crawled currently not indexed covers what to check next.

If you're checking more than a handful of redirected URLs, doing this one by one in URL Inspection doesn't scale. SEO Heatmap visualizes your Page indexing data across a whole site, so you can see at a glance which redirected URLs Google has actually processed and which are still stuck, instead of looking them up individually.

What a Wrong Redirect Choice Looks Like in Google Search Console

Knowing the theory doesn't help much if you can't recognize the problem in your own data. Here's what a redirect gone wrong actually looks like in GSC:

The old URL is still indexed months after a 301 that should have consolidated it. Usually means the redirect isn't live on every path to that URL (check both the www and non-www version, and both http and https), or there's a redirect chain somewhere breaking the signal before it reaches Google.

"Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user" shows up after you set up a redirect. This means Google is choosing to keep the old URL indexed despite your redirect, often because the content on both URLs still looks close to identical, or the redirect behaves inconsistently across page variants. If you're seeing duplicate statuses instead of clean redirect processing, that's a canonicalization problem layered on top of the redirect. Our guide on duplicate without user-selected canonical walks through diagnosing that separately.

Impressions and clicks stay split between the old and new URL for weeks in the Performance report. This is usually a sign the redirect type doesn't match what you actually need. Either it's a 302 sitting on what should have been a permanent move, or there's enough inconsistency in how the redirect fires that Google hasn't fully committed to the new URL yet.

What I typically see in audits: split signals almost always trace back to a redirect that only exists on one URL variant. Someone set up example.com/old-page → example.com/new-page, but www.example.com/old-page was never covered, so a chunk of inbound links and direct traffic still hits an unredirected path.

Common Redirect Mistakes That Confuse Google

• Redirect chains (A → B → C). Google follows a limited number of hops before giving up, and each extra hop slows down signal consolidation even when it doesn't break the chain outright.
• Redirect loops. A redirects to B, B redirects back to A. This breaks the redirect completely, for both users and Googlebot.
• Leaving a 302 on a permanent change. Delays signal consolidation indefinitely, with no upside.
• Redirecting many unrelated old URLs to one page (often the homepage). Google may not treat this as a legitimate signal transfer at all, since the destination isn't a relevant replacement for most of the URLs pointing to it.
• Not testing before a site-wide rollout. Verify status codes and destinations on a sample of URLs before pushing redirects across an entire site or migration.

Monitoring Redirects After Launch

Confirming a redirect works on day one isn't the same as confirming it keeps working. Build in a recheck cadence:

• Spot-check redirected URLs in GSC at 2, 6, and 12 weeks after launch
• Watch the Page indexing report for the old URL count moving from indexed to "Page with redirect," or dropping out
• Watch the Performance report for impressions and clicks shifting from old URLs to new ones
• For large migrations, track this at the URL pattern level; checking one URL at a time in URL Inspection doesn't scale once you're past a handful of redirects

For migration-scale monitoring, SEO Heatmap is built for exactly this: visualizing GSC indexing and performance data across many URLs at once, so a stalled redirect shows up as a pattern instead of getting lost in a spreadsheet of individual checks.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a 302 redirect permanently instead of a 301?

No, not effectively. Google generally won't transfer ranking signals to the destination URL while it reads a redirect as temporary, so leaving a 302 in place for a permanent change delays consolidation instead of preventing it. If you know a page move is permanent, switch to a 301 as soon as you commit.

How long does it take for Google to update rankings after a 301 redirect?

Most sites see the transfer begin within a few days to a few weeks, though full consolidation can take longer on lower-priority pages. High-authority pages tend to update faster because Google crawls them more often. Check the old URL's status in Search Console's URL Inspection tool rather than guessing based on a fixed timeline.

Does switching from a 302 to a 301 later cause any SEO issues?

No, switching is safe and often the right move once you've committed to a permanent change. There's no penalty for updating the status code, and Google simply starts treating the signal differently from that point forward. The only real cost is time: whatever period the page spent on a 302 is time Google wasn't consolidating rankings on the new URL.

What's the difference between a 301 redirect and a canonical tag?

A redirect sends users and crawlers to a different URL entirely, while a canonical tag lets both URLs stay live but tells Google which one to treat as the primary version. Use a redirect when you want visitors to land on the new URL and the old one to stop existing in practice. Use a canonical tag when both versions need to remain accessible, such as a product page reachable through multiple category paths.

Will a 301 redirect pass all of my page's ranking value to the new URL?

Not necessarily all of it, but Google's own guidance says a 301 passes most ranking signals to the destination. Specific percentages you might see elsewhere, like "90 to 99%" or "a 15% loss," aren't backed by official Google documentation. The more useful check is confirming in Search Console that Google has switched to treating your new URL as the canonical version.

What happens if I forget to remove a redirect after a temporary campaign ends?

Nothing breaks automatically, but leaving an unused 302 in place indefinitely can start to look like an abandoned page to Google over time. It also spends crawl budget on a URL that no longer serves a real purpose. Clean up campaign redirects once the page is retired for good, or convert them to a 301 if you've decided not to reuse that URL.

How many redirects can I chain together before it causes problems?

Even a short chain can cause problems, so the safest approach is to avoid chaining at all. Google follows a limited number of redirect hops before it stops, and each extra hop slows down how quickly ranking signals reach the final destination. Point every redirect straight to its final URL instead of stacking multiple hops.

What should I check first if my new URL isn't ranking after a redirect?

Start with Search Console's URL Inspection tool to confirm Google has indexed the new URL and selected it as the canonical version. If the old URL still shows as indexed weeks after launch, check whether the redirect is live on every URL variant, including www, non-www, and both http and https versions. A partial redirect that only covers one variant is one of the most common reasons signals stay split between old and new URLs.

If you're managing a migration or a redirect cleanup, SEO Heatmap helps you visualize which redirected URLs Google has actually processed in Search Console, so nothing stays stuck for months without you noticing. Give it a try. It's free.