A redirect sends visitors and crawlers from one URL to another. Used well, it preserves your hard-won rankings when a page moves. Used carelessly, it slows pages down, wastes crawl effort and leaves old URLs stuck in search results.
301 and 302: what they say
| Code | Meaning | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| 301 | Moved permanently | The old URL is gone for good: a rename, a redesign, a domain change |
| 302 | Found (temporary) | The move is short-lived: a temporary promotion, a maintenance page |
| 307 / 308 | Temporary / permanent, request method preserved | Mostly APIs and form posts; for pages they behave like 302 / 301 |
The difference is the signal. A permanent redirect tells search engines to replace the old URL with the new one in their index. A temporary redirect tells them to keep the old URL.
Google has said that both kinds pass ranking signals to the destination. The practical rule is still simple: use a 301 when the move is permanent, so the intent is clear to every crawler and tool.
Redirect chains and loops
A chain happens when one redirect leads to another:
http://example.com/old -> https://example.com/old -> https://www.example.com/old -> https://www.example.com/newEach hop costs a full request. Visitors wait longer, and Google follows only a limited number of hops (up to 10) before giving up, so long chains risk the final page never being reached. A loop (A to B to A) is worse: the page cannot be loaded at all.
Chains build up over time. A site moves to HTTPS, then adds www, then restructures its URLs, and each change stacks another redirect on the old ones.
The fix is to redirect every old URL straight to the final destination in one hop, and to update your internal links so they point at the final URL and never trigger a redirect at all.
Mistakes worth checking for
- Redirecting everything to the homepage. When a page is removed, sending it to the home page looks like a soft 404 to Google. Redirect to the closest relevant page, or return 404 or 410 if there is none.
- Mixed protocol and host rules. Pick one canonical form (for example
https://www) and send all variants there in a single step. - Redirects set in several places. A server rule, a plugin and a CDN rule can combine into a chain nobody planned.
- Internal links pointing at redirected URLs. They work, but every click pays for a hop.
Trace a redirect path
curl seoloop.in/redirects/example.com/old-pageThis prints every hop with its status code and the final URL. Ideal output has zero or one hop. If you see three, you have a chain to flatten.
For a quick yes or no on whether the final URL can be indexed, follow up with:
curl seoloop.in/indexable/example.com/old-pageChecklist
- Permanent move: 301, straight to the final URL
- No chains: one hop at most
- Internal links updated to the new URLs
- Removed pages go to a relevant page, or return 404 or 410
- Redirects tested after every migration
Once you can read the signals, put them together in how to do an SEO audit.