Redirecting articles throughout site: 301 or 302?

Which option is the most SE friendly?

[moishier]

We have our site built off a CMS. The whole site, tens of thousands of articles, is built off one one file called article.asp which is passed an ID and the file does an ASP response.redirect to another template (path) with the ID for the content.

Currently the http status code given for the pages when it redirects is a 302.

I have read here that for various SEO reasons the best way to redirect a domain name and also to retain the PR is to make a 301 redirect.

The question is: does this theory also apply to a "complete" site with all it's pages being redirected this way? Meaning, 301 means "object permanently moved" and that is not really true in this case; it is just the architecture that we have that cannot be changed that makes our site behave that way.

So: Which code should we be returning site-wide on our "redirects" that would be the most SEO friendly?

Thanks!

[moishier]

Can anyone offer their professional insight and experience with this?

[moishier]

C'mon, no-one as experience with this?

[badtzmaru]

My experience is that there is no difference between a 301 and a 302.

[moishier]

Everyone here seems to think that 301 is better than 302.

My question is doing a 301 sitewide on every article.

Is it a bad thing?

[bull]

redirect target same domain, different filename only?

[dannyboy]

I've also heard 302 can result in problems. I've always used 301 redirects with success.

[edited by: dannyboy at 6:07 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2004]

[moishier]

Correct.

[moishier]

Dannyboy,

Have you used them sitewide, like I am asking?

[badtzmaru]

I have a few domains pointed into one domain via 301 redirects. On the one domain, I do a 302 redirect to domain.com/domain/index . So basically, google travels through a 301 AND a 302 to get into the site. And it does this with no problem and PR carries through, etc. I've changed the types of redirects around just for the heck of it and it didn't make any difference at all.

[bull]

Using them without problems on-site. 301 get "stacked" by Googlebot and are fetched all together at the end of the crawl.

[dannyboy]

I haven't used 301 redirects on a site-wide basis. I've only used it when I took old page links off the server and needed a way to redirect old traffic to the new location.

It appears that you're using 302 redirects as a permanent solution, using middle-man scripts to do the dirty work. Generally, 30* redirects are only meant to be a temporary solution.

[moishier]

I know that. But this method decreases the load on the server to look up the proper template for every article on every page load. We are not at a point now to change it.

So what it boils down to now is what error code we should be using.

So far I have not heard any strong voices either way...

[dannyboy]

This article

[searchenginewatch.com...]

states "A 302 temporary redirect tells Googlebot, 'Okay, go here for now, but try again later because it may not be that way later,'" he further explained. "If it's going to be that way for good and in the same location, then do a permanent one -- a 301 redirect."

These links also discuss the 301 vs 302 in different variations:

[hotnetprofits.com...]
[drupal.org...]

There is no right or wrong, better or worse. The bottomline is, which link do you "prefer" the search engines to reference: pre-redirection or post-redirection? If it's pre, use 302. If it's post, use 301.

For instance,

If your content script has a link

[website.com...]

that redirects to:

[website.com...]

and you want the prior "?page-ID" link used for incoming referrals from search engine indexes, use 302 redirects.

If you want search engines to only show the latter "/product-123/" url in search results, use 301.

[moishier]

The bottomline is, which link do you "prefer" the search engines to reference: pre-redirection or post-redirection? If it's pre, use 302. If it's post, use 301.

It's more than just that. 301 makes your PR count as combined while 302 does not. It says that even in the links that you quoted.

[dannyboy]

I haven't experienced this. I've redirected many pages using 301 without any change in page rank or search engine positioning. I understand, you're trying to find a good overriding reason to stick with 302; I doubt there is one.