What is the SEO difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?

A 301 (Moved Permanently) passes 95-99% of PageRank link equity to the destination URL and causes search engines to update their index. A 302 (Found / Temporary) does not transfer canonical indexing, retaining the original URL in search results.

How does a redirect chain impact website performance and SEO ranking?

Each redirect hop incurs an additional DNS lookup, TCP connection, and TLS handshake (adding 100-300ms latency per hop). Long redirect chains deplete search engine crawl budgets and can trigger Google penalties or ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS errors.

What is the difference between 307 Temporary and 308 Permanent redirects?

HTTP 307 and 308 guarantee that the HTTP request method (e.g. POST) and request body remain unchanged during redirection, unlike 301 and 302 which historically rewrote POST requests to GET.

RFC 9110 HTTP Status Code & Hop Engine

HTTP Redirect Chain & Status Tracer

Trace the complete hop-by-hop HTTP redirection path for any URL. Inspect 301, 302, 307, and 308 headers, server signatures, per-hop latency, and prevent Google PageRank link equity decay.

Technical SEO & HTTP Routing Masterclass

How HTTP Status Codes, Redirect Chains & Link Equity Operate

A systems engineer and technical SEO guide to 301 permanent redirects, 302 temporary redirects, 307/308 method-preserving hops, HSTS strict transport security preloading, and avoiding crawl budget degradation.

RFC 9110 Specification

HTTP 3xx Redirection Status Codes Reference

Selecting the correct HTTP status code directly determines whether search engines transfer PageRank equity and how browsers cache destination endpoints:

HTTP Code	Standard Definition	Method Preservation	SEO Link Equity (PageRank)	Browser Caching
301	Moved Permanently	May change POST to GET	Transfers 95-99% link equity	Cached aggressively by browser
302	Found (Temporary Redirect)	May change POST to GET	Does not transfer PageRank canonical	Not cached unless Cache-Control allows
307	Temporary Redirect	Guaranteed (Preserves POST body)	Temporary; original URL kept in index	Not cached
308	Permanent Redirect (RFC 7538)	Guaranteed (Preserves POST body)	Transfers 95-99% link equity	Cached permanently

Performance Penalty

Redirect Chains & Crawl Budget

A redirect chain occurs when URL A redirects to URL B, which in turn redirects to URL C before reaching final URL D.

Consequences of Redirect Chains:

Adds 100-300ms network latency per hop (cumulative DNS, TCP, and TLS handshakes).
Googlebot stops following redirect chains after 5 hops, returning a crawl error.
Dilutes link equity and slows Core Web Vitals Time to First Byte (TTFB).

Error Prevention

Resolving ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS

Circular redirect loops occur when URL A redirects to URL B, and URL B redirects back to URL A.

Common Root Causes:

Cloudflare Flexible SSL Loop: Cloudflare connects to your origin on HTTP port 80, but your origin forces an HTTPS redirect back to Cloudflare. Fix: Set Cloudflare SSL to Full (Strict).
Trailing Slash Conflicts: Server config rewrites /page to /page/, while CMS rewrites /page/ to /page.

Redirect Engineering Knowledge Base

Frequently Asked Questions: HTTP Redirects & SEO

HSTS (RFC 6797) sends a header (Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload) instructing browsers to automatically upgrade any plaintext HTTP request to encrypted HTTPS internally inside the browser (307 Internal Redirect) before transmitting any packet onto the network. This eliminates network roundtrips on port 80 and blocks man-in-the-middle SSL stripping attacks.

Nginx: return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;

Apache (.htaccess): RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Google search documentation notes that Googlebot may take several months to crawl, discover, and recrawl all historical inbound backlinks across third-party websites. Maintaining the 301 redirect for a full calendar year guarantees that all external backlink juice, user bookmarks, and canonical signals are fully mapped to the new URL destination.