301 redirect file question

[mrbobland]

Hi Everyone,

I am creating a list of 301 redirects to give to a developer to put into Magento. I used Screaming Frog to crawl the site, but I have noticed that all of their urls 302 to another page. I am wondering if I should 301 the first URL to the url on the new site, or the second. I am thinking the first, but would love some confirmation.

Thank you!

[tretanto]

If there is a good reason for those redirects to be temporary, use the first URL. If not use the second.

[BeanstalkIM]

I don't know the specific scenario you're talking about obviously but I'd recommend first checking under:

system > configuration > web > url options

Majento shouldn't be generating a 302 on every page but I'll be the first to say that Majento also isn't my strong suit.  I don't like the sounds of it however as a 302 can bleed out your PageRank.

At what I'm hearing I'd recommend for the 301s you're setting up now - point them to the final target.  Even if Majento was doing a 301 I'd still recommend this.  Think of it like you're asking me for directions and I know both the final destination and another guy who does too.  Would you rather I just told you where to go or pointed at the other guy?

That said, hopefully someone can come up with a more specific Majento answer for you.

[mrbobland]

Hi Dave,

The current site is .net I believe. We are moving to a Magento site. It's an old site so we're not sure why they have all these 302's, but I am planning on making them all 301's so we can move whatever rank there is.

Wouldn't Google actually be indexing the original URL since these are 302 redirects and they see them as temporary?

Thanks for your help!
Alyssa

[mrbobland]

Thanks Daniel.  There isn't a good reason anymore, we are moving the site and have a new design. I am thinking that Google is indexing the original URL though since they see the second URL as temporary. Is this incorrect?

Alyssa

[BeanstalkIM]

HI Alyssa, Dave here.

I know you may not want to give out your URL publically but if you can send me your URL as a private message I'm happy to look into it specifically as I'd hate to give the wrong answer.  I'll answer it here in this thread so it can serve as useful to others but I'll keep the URL to myself.

Dave

[tretanto]

Google will index the second URL but will not pass any SEO weight to it since, as a temporary redirection, the first URL is expected to be restored shortly.

You can find a very helpful explanation about redirections here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/[redirection](https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection "Redirection")