Why are 301 redirects good and 302 redirects bad

Couldn't spammers just use301's and get us all banned

[lgn]

I just finished getting my 301 redirects to work in an ASP script, because I was told that 301 is the proper way to get use redirects.

Spammers have been using 302 redirects and meta refreshes for years and this method has gotten this technique banned by the search engines.

Couldn't spammers just use 301 redirects in an ASP script also. How does google know if the content has actually been moved or not.

Their may be a technical explanation for this, but I can't think of any.

Can anybody help.

I don't want to wake up someday and find that my 301 redirect has gotten me banned.

[bilalak]

I think 301 are better because they are permanent redirect and very useful when moving some pages and wanting to keep good PR.

Spamming issue is not the whole story of course

[trillianjedi]

Couldn't spammers just use 301's and get us all banned

How?

All a 301 does is redirect a URL.

TJ

[Dreamquick]

I think what he means is that couldn't 301 / 302 become a tell-tale sign of spammers and so get penalised...

If that was the question then the answer is no. Why? Quite simply they'd have just penalised pretty much every established site on the internet because after a while stuff moves and so being a good webmaster you'd use a 301 to point to the new location.

Kind of the same as "Will they penalised multiple sites on the same IP?" always comes back as no because that would mean banning anyone using a virtual site, which is probably quite a lot of small-medium websites.

If you mean is it possible for a spammer to use a 301 to get *someone else* banned? Then the answer is still no - for the same reasons that a penalised site linking to you doesn't affect your site.

- Tony