What's the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?

A 301 is a permanent redirect: it tells browsers and crawlers the page has moved for good, and it passes the old URL's ranking signals to the new one. A 302 is temporary: it says the move is short-term, so search engines keep the original URL indexed and don't transfer signals.

Does a 301 redirect pass link equity?

Yes. Google has confirmed 301s pass full ranking signals (PageRank) with no loss. A 302, being temporary, is not meant to — though Google may eventually treat a long-lived 302 like a 301 if it never changes.

Which redirect should I use when moving a page permanently?

Always a 301. Permanent content moves, HTTP→HTTPS, non-www→www consolidation, and merged pages should all use 301 so the new URL inherits the old one's authority.

Do AI crawlers follow redirects?

Yes — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and the rest follow HTTP redirects like any crawler. But every redirect adds a hop and wastes crawl budget, so redirect once to the final URL rather than chaining redirects.

301 vs 302 redirects: which one to use (and when it matters)

Use a 301 when a page has moved permanently — it transfers the old URL's ranking signals to the new one with no loss. Use a 302 only when the move is genuinely temporary and you want search engines to keep indexing the original URL. Picking the wrong one is one of the most common — and most costly — technical SEO mistakes, because a stray 302 on a permanent move quietly throws away years of accumulated authority.

The one-sentence rule

301 = permanent. "This page has moved for good. Send everyone — and all the ranking signals — to the new URL."
302 = temporary. "This page is briefly somewhere else. Keep the original indexed; I'll be back."

If the move is forever, you want 301. That's 95% of real-world redirects.

Why the difference actually matters

When a page has earned rankings, backlinks, and — increasingly — AI citations, all of that is attached to its URL. A 301 passes that equity to the destination: Google consolidates the old and new URLs and the new one inherits the authority. A 302 deliberately does not — because you've told Google the original is coming back, it keeps the old URL in the index and withholds the signal transfer.

So if you permanently move a page but use a 302, you've told search engines to keep ranking a URL that no longer serves content, and to not credit the page that does. The result is usually a ranking drop that's maddening to diagnose, because everything "works" for users — the redirect fires fine; only the search signals leak away.

When to use each

Use a 301 for:

Permanently moving or renaming a page (/old-post → /new-post)
Consolidating duplicates (merging two articles into one)
HTTP → HTTPS
non-www → www (or the reverse) — domain canonicalization
Retiring a page and sending its traffic to the closest relevant one
Post-migration URL changes

Use a 302 for:

A/B testing where you'll revert
A temporary promo or seasonal page that will come down
Geo/language routing you intend to keep dynamic
A page briefly down for maintenance

If you can't articulate why the move is temporary, it isn't — use a 301.

How AI crawlers treat redirects

The AI crawlers behind ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity follow redirects like any other bot, and the permanent/temporary distinction matters to them for the same reason: a 301 tells them the citation-worthy content now lives at the new URL, so references consolidate there. But there's an extra cost to watch — redirect chains. Every hop (/a → /b → /c) is another request, and crawlers (especially AI ones, which crawl less patiently than Googlebot) may give up or waste budget. Always redirect straight to the final destination.

You can confirm crawlers still reach your content after a redirect with the AI Crawler Access Checker, and check for accidental chains by watching your logs.

The mistakes that cost traffic

302 on a permanent move. The classic. Many CMSs and frameworks default to 302 (307 in some stacks) unless you explicitly set 301. Check your config.
Redirect chains. /a → /b → /c instead of /a → /c and /b → /c. Each chain dilutes signal and slows crawlers.
Redirecting everything to the homepage. When you retire pages, send each to the most relevant live page, not a blanket homepage redirect — Google often treats mass homepage redirects as soft-404s and passes little value.
Redirect loops. /a → /b → /a. Breaks the page entirely.
Forgetting to update internal links. Redirects are a safety net, not a substitute for fixing the actual <a href> links on your site. Internal links should point straight at the final URL.

Generate the rules without hand-writing them

Redirect syntax differs by platform — .htaccess (Apache), nginx, Next.js config, Cloudflare Pages — and it's easy to fat-finger a regex. Our free Redirect Rules Generator turns a simple list of old→new URL pairs into copy-paste rules in all four formats, with the 301/302 choice as a toggle so you can't accidentally ship the wrong status code. Paste your pairs, pick 301 (the default for a reason), and copy the output for your stack.

Bottom line

When in doubt, 301. It's the correct choice for virtually every permanent change, it preserves the authority you've built, and it's the one that keeps both search engines and AI crawlers pointed at the right URL. Reserve 302 for the genuinely temporary — and if you're generating a batch of redirects for a migration, build them with the generator so every rule ships with the status code you intended.