302 Moved Temporarily or 301?

Question

I have a question on redirects.

HTTP status code checker tool shows "HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily" for the home page URL http://someurl.com (just a namesake URL). Also, this URL opens up http://www.someurl.com/general/index.

As you can see, a NON-WWW URL to a WWW URL redirect is happening.

My questions are:

1. Is a 302 redirect acceptable for the home page?

2. Will this affect the site showing up in search results in anyway?

3. Isnt redirection to /general/index a bad practice?

Answer 1

If you want to redirect example.com => www.example.com (or viceversa), then use a 301. If you want to redirect the root URL to an internal path, www.example.com => www.example.com/general/index then use a 302.

The internal redirection isn't necessary a bad practice. Sometimes CMSs impose this redirect because the CMS package needs to be installed in subfolders and/or generates a custom homepage URL.

Answer 2

Those are the answers to your question:

1. In this case you should use a 301 (permanent redirect) because this is a definitive change of the behavior of that url
2. This will not affect your website in anyway. The Search Engine will still be able to index your pages in the right way. They, of course, will update your old homepage with the new one (/general/index)
3. It's not a bad practice but in my opinion you should change this behavios simply using an .htaccess . So the incoming request to the old index will be served by the new homepage.

Answer 3

Please dont do 302 redirect for your home page, I prefer you doing 301 redirect. You can also use Google webmaster tools to set up your preferred domain.