Product Bundles - Choosing 301 or 302 When Redirecting All Child Items to 1 Parent

Question

Let's say there is a product "Stainless BBQ Grill" which has various extra options available by "adding on" additional products. Lets call it a bundle/group/kit...components like side burner, digital thermometer, chrome rims, cheetah fur, etc can be chosen, however these things are somewhat specific to the "Stainless BBQ Grill". The components are more or less just simple products themselves.

In the store the Grill is obviously visible and searchable, however a setting for the component products still allows them to be visible/searchable, but redirects user into parent Grill when clicked. Currently, this uses a 302 redirect, I assume partially to:

• preserve juice on the component products if OP ever decides to un-redirect and wishes to allow customers to enter the item.
• allow OP to change the parent redirect if they feel the product should instead redirect to another parent it is included in.

I'm kinda torn and thinking this may be one of the very few times 302 is ok. How do other ecoms handle this child to parent redirect option? Would a 301 be better in this case? If so, how would big G[oogle] cope if we ever decide to remove this redirect on the components? How would G react if we ever decide to change the parent?

I don't see stuff changing around much in time, but it's a big new site so components may change during initial marketing or various spots along the the ~6 month ramp up.

Answer 1

I think the software is missing the point of 301 and 302 redirects completely.

Their purpose is to act as signposts to actual "documents" with actual content the client is requesting.

• 301 means the document has permanently moved to a different url
• 302 means the document has temporarily moved to a different url

The scenario you are describing sounds more like

1. client requests "search" document
2. client enters term "cheetah fur" & POSTS to server
3. server finds a matching "cheetah fur" document
4. server returns "results" document containing url to the "cheetah fur" document
5. client requests "cheetah fur" document url
6. server responds with a 301 or 302 redirect to the "BBQ Grill" document url instead

This is an incorrect usage of 301/302 redirects if we assume the contents of the "cheetah fur" document and the "BBQ Grill" document are intended to be different.

If there is no "cheetah fur" document then the search result page should just include the url for the "BBQ Grill" document instead of an incorrect redirect.

If there is a "cheetah fur" document how is the client supposed to access it ?