302 Redirect

A 302 is an HTTP status code meaning "this page has moved temporarily". Unlike a 301, it tells search engines the original URL is coming back, so they should keep indexing the old URL rather than swapping in the destination.

Use a 302 only when the move genuinely is temporary — an A/B test, a seasonal promo page, a page briefly down for maintenance, or geolocation routing. The classic error is using a 302 for a permanent move: Google often still figures it out and treats it like a 301, but you are relying on its guess instead of telling it clearly. When in doubt about permanence, a 301 is the safer default for anything meant to stick.

Senior practitioners audit for accidental 302s left behind by developers or CMS defaults, because temporary redirects on permanent moves create ambiguity that delays consolidation and can leave the wrong URL indexed. The judgement is intent-signalling: choose the status code that matches your actual plan, and treat a stray 302 in a migration as a bug to fix, not a harmless quirk.