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There is a product that consists of multiple services that are hosted on different domains. One of the services is used to host user's packages which are available through the URL:

service.productdomain.com/packageid

only direct links are used to access the packages, so the service doesn't have a homepage and requests to service.productdomain.com/ will be 302 redirected to productdomain.com/ (URL of the main product). Is it ok for search engines?

Will they request service.productdomain.com/robots.txt, sitemap (which is defined in robots.txt), and index other pages that are specified in sitemap?

I can also create a homepage with some general information and meta tags if existing approach doesn't work for search crawlers.

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  • You should think about using a 301 redirect and whether a 302 is really what you want. As well, with any redirect, Google will not be looking for a robots.txt or sitemap unless there are pages at that URL that do not redirect. – closetnoc Feb 2 '16 at 16:17
  • Does it mean that if homepage redirects to another domain, search crawler will not request robots.txt, sitemap and will not index resources that are listed in sitemap? (Resources that are listed in sitemap return html with 200 OK) – ntl Feb 8 '16 at 10:32
  • I am sorry, I was not clear and in fact, confusing and what I wrote misleading. If the entire domain is redirected (as in a blanket redirect), the sitemap and robots.txt would be on the new domain. Whereas if only pages are redirected, any sitemap and robots.txt would be fetched. However, if all the pages are redirected but not the entire domain, then there is no point to a sitemap or robots.txt file and it may be ignored or not fetched if there are no indexed pages. – closetnoc Feb 8 '16 at 14:36
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A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect. It passes 0% of link juice (ranking power) and, in most cases, should not be used.

It is common practice to redirect one URL to another. When doing this, it is critical to observe best practices in order to maintain SEO value.

Source:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection

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  • Can you also answer given questions? "Is it ok for search engines? Will they request service.productdomain.com/robots.txt, sitemap (which is defined in robots.txt), and index other pages that are specified in sitemap?" – ntl Feb 2 '16 at 11:25
  • A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect. It passes 0% of link juice (ranking power) and, in most cases, should not be used. – Josip Ivic Feb 2 '16 at 11:26

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