Link Resolvers, Academic Publishing, and SEO Visibility

[BenjaminMorel]

I have recently started working at an academic publisher on their digital products. In this industry it's standard practice to use link resolvers - such as SFX from ExLibris - when updating a product as an easy way to manage URL migration. However, these link resolvers appear to use 302 redirects which makes me concerned about the potential for rankings to drop.

Does anybody out there know about the use of link resolvers and their effects on search engine visibility?

The main sources of information I've been able to find so far have been a Google Webmaster Central forum post and a piece on DOI news from 2005. Any information that's more up to date would be very useful, thanks!

[Eric_Rohrback]

I'm not familiar with this industry, so i'll say which redirect method you choose depends on the outcome you want. 301 is permanent, which will pass a canonical signal to Google to the new page. 302 is temporary, so if you're changing the links at any point this might be fine to use.

Can you explain with a little more detail how these are used? It would help to understand the context.

[BenjaminMorel]

Hi Eric,

As I say I'm familiar with the general principles of redirects, having applied them before with other clients. Unfortunately it's the industry-specific knowledge I need.

Link resolvers are regularly used in academic publishing to point from, for example, library holdings pages to an ebook or a publisher's platform, at which point temporary redirects make sense for various reasons. My concern is that in using them to point from our old site to our new site will cause us problems.