Digital marketing term
302 Redirect
A temporary HTTP response that sends users to another URL while signaling the original address should return. Use it for maintenance, tests, geo detours, or short campaign paths.
Detailed explanation
On a temporary detour the browser follows the new location, but search tries to keep the original URL in the index. Maintenance pages, short promos, geo hops, and test variants fit. A domain move or a permanent slug change does not.
The costly mistake is migrating on a 302 and leaving it for months. Google may treat a long-lived 302 like a 301; if your intent is unclear, signals split. A 307 is often cleaner when you must preserve the HTTP method on a POST.
Rule of thumb: if you will put the original URL back, keep it temporary. When the move is done, switch to 301. Search Console’s canonical on the target is a practical check that the hop is still treated as temporary.
Frequently asked questions
- Can a long-lived 302 start acting like a 301?
- Google may consolidate a 302 that looks permanent. Do not rely on that. Make real moves a 301.
- Is a 302 right for an A/B test?
- Yes when the hop is short and reversible. When a variant becomes the real URL, switch to 301 or serve it directly.
Related terms
Internal links for the topic cluster — read these concepts together.
- RedirectAn HTTP response that sends browsers and crawlers from one URL to another; permanent (301) and temporary (302/307) codes do different jobs. Broken pages, moved content, and short campaign paths all use this mechanism.
- 301 RedirectAn HTTP response that tells browsers and crawlers a URL has moved for good, and the new address should replace it. Use it for migrations, HTTPS, and retired pages that have a real equivalent.
- URLThe full address a browser opens: scheme, host, and path in one string. People share it, crawlers fetch it, and analytics treat it as a page — canonical choice should pin signals to one address.
- SEOSEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the set of technical and content practices that help a website rank more visibly in organic search results.
- Canonical URLA Canonical URL is an HTML tag that tells search engines which address should be treated as the "primary" version among multiple pages with identical or very similar content.