What should be use 301 or 302 redirection for 404 pages

[koamit]

Please suggest which redirection we should use for 404 pages- 301 or 302. If you can elaborate it with reason then it will be highly appreciated.

[Jinx14678]

It is situational

301 = Permanent Redirect - and better for SEO purposes as this tells the search engine that the redirected page has become the new page

302 = Temporary - Search engines of course follow the 302, I even think it will show the new page in results, but if it is a permanent, and you are worried about this - then use a 301.

Tough to give any kind of reason for use other than that above without some situational knowledge

But to a user, it is does not matter wheter it is a 301 or 302, but to bots the above differences apply.

And as a 404 I would assume it is a 301 - but not sure, due to I do not know the reason for the 404

For reference

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

[My-Favourite-Holiday-Cottages]

If you have moved the content elsewhere, 301 Permanent Redirect should be used, as it passes all(well most) the old pages link value e.t.c. to the new page

If it's temporarly elsewhere, 302

If it's gone for good and not coming back and theres nowhere apropriate to send people, consider 410 gone.

If you mean what status code should your missing pages/bad urls return, that should be 404, not 3XX. Redirecting the user to a 'error' page with a 301 that then returns 200 ok is a great way to have a lot of problems and little way of spotting them.