302 Redirects for ads - and Google SEO

[realcontent]

Hi, I originally posted this on another areas of webmasterworld, but will try here...I have a client who is a business publisher. On their site, if you click on a link, it temporarily takes you to an ad page, and then back to the article you are trying to get to. According to google webmaster tools, this is a 302 redirect, which must obviously be very bad for SEO. The client needs these ads as it is their primary means of revenue - but - from an SEO standpoint, should they be converted to DHTML ads? Thank you!

[fishfinger]

Look at the Google's cache of the content page and the ad page respectively to see what content Google attributes to each url.

If the 302 is causing a 'hijack' scenario you'll see it.

Even if it isn't, anything that gets interpreted by Google as a 302 is not recommended because of the way Google is known to treat them.

[g1smd]

This sounds like a nasty type of spider trap. There's potentially plenty of ways that it could trip you up.

[realcontent]

So would you recommend going from something that will cause a 302 to a DHTML layer advertisement? Thank you both for your responses.

[g1smd]

One thing to check. What happens if you visit the site as if you were a search engine robot? Do you still get redirected?

Investigate whether the site implements any reverse IP lookup to see if you're a bot. It may be that those requests coming from bots are fulfilled without the redirect happening.

[tedster]

You can display and then hide an advertising div without using a redirect of any kind. The div is in the original source code and javascript switches its visibility. It's the kind of thing that a "Lightbox" does.