Understanding a 302 Redirect

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Understanding a 302 Redirect

jakegotmail

6:45 pm on Nov 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

I am looking to set up a temporary redirect from one domain to another domain, for an undetermined length of time. Are there any search issues I should evaluate - concerning the period after the 302 is set up, and when it is eventually removed - before I go ahead with the redirect?

What should I expect to see in regard to the SERP's over the course of this whole process? The two respective sites do rank on page one for certain keywords at present, separate pages for others. PR and backlinks are similar for both.

The former domain may end up being reestablished, it may end up permanently redirecting to the latter domain, it may end up redirecting to another domain.

Is there any other information that may be useful in assisting with this question?

visitor

9:35 pm on Nov 14, 2008 (gmt 0)

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

I think the article is applicable to your scenario.

Good luck with the move :)

tedster

2:08 am on Nov 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

I thought this situation was worth a direct question to Matt Cutts, and since we're a PubCon, I had a chance to ask. He said you should make your best guess at how long you will need the reidrect. Anything more than a week or two and you should use a 301 - otherwise the 302 will complicate things for you.

If you do get the go-ahead to go back to the original domain, it's true that it will take a bit of time to sort things out when the 301 reverses direction - but it will still be better than a long-term 302.

youfoundjake

3:00 am on Nov 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

Really? That surprises me quite a bit since a 301 is moved permanently, wouldn't that affect the link graph significantly, especially with the pushes from the various datacenters, it would almost seem riskier, example:
crawl a site with 301's, push the new url's out to the primary index, which takes how long? and then remove the 301's, have the site crawled, and those url's pushed out to the index, which takes how long?

It almost seems like there would be a month of time where the serps wouldn't be in synch with what the website url is?

Did I make any sense?

Then of course it came from Mr. Cutts, and he knows a little more then me, so I'd listen to him, just curious on why he said it?

Have fun at PubCon Ted, hope to see you there next year...

tedster

6:27 am on Nov 15, 2008 (gmt 0)

The complications come in becaise of the kinds of abuses that both types of redirects have been involved with, Jake. It's more like "crawl a site with any kind of redirect, check 8 ways from Sunday to make sure nothing tricky is going on, then push the new url's out to the primary index."