No difference anymore between 301 and 302

[nans]

According to http://searchengineland.com/google-no-pagerank-dilution-using-301-302-30x-redirects-anymore-254608

What do you think?

[Alick300]

Hi Nancy,

Yes Google said it very clearly but big caveat here and I would suggest you to go through this detailed post of Cyrus.

https://moz.com/blog/301-redirection-rules-for-seo

Thanks

[LoganRay]

They're not saying there's no difference, a 301 is still a permanent redirect and a 302 is a temporary redirect. You should always differentiate between the 2 when choosing to redirect a page elsewhere. What Google is saying now is that they no longer discount a page's authority because of a redirect. However, take this with a grain of salt. This doesn't mean you should go around redirecting wherever and whenever. Your redirects still need to make sense, they need to be as relevant to the old page as possible, and they should always benefit the end-user.

[TammyWood]

A large grain of salt! Google is notorious for saying these things and then ...well, backing down a bit.

[dohertyjf]

There's a lot of nuance to what is being said there. As others in the community have said, if you were going to test it out yourself on your own site and put your own income and business on the line, would you choose a 302 over a 301 without testing it?

We saw what happened to Wired as they were going HTTPS and used 302s - https://www.wired.com/2016/09/wired-completely-encrypted/

Google has also said, and some people have been able to test for different reasons, that if a 302 is left in place long enough then Google may start treating them like 301s and start passing link equity through a 302. But, that's a lot of ifs and uncertainties, at least way too many for me.