Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. 302 redirect used, submit old sitemap?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    302 redirect used, submit old sitemap?

    Technical SEO
    4
    4
    2465
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Theo-NL
      Theo-NL last edited by

      The website of a partner of mine was recently migrated to a new platform. Even though the content on the pages mostly stayed the same, both the HTML source (divs, meta data, headers, etc.) and URLs (removed index.php, removed capitalization, etc) changed heavily. Unfortunately, the URLs of ALL forum posts (150K+) were redirected using a 302 redirect, which was only recently discovered and swiftly changed to a 301 after the discovery. Several other important content pages (150+) weren't redirected at all at first, but most now have a 301 redirect as well. The 302 redirects and 404 content pages had been live for over 2 weeks at that point, and judging by the consistent day/day drop in organic traffic, I'm guessing Google didn't like the way this migration went.

      My best guess would be that Google is currently treating all these content pages as 'new' (after all, the source code changed 50%+, most of the meta data changed, the URL changed, and a 302 redirect was used). On top of that, the large number of 404's they've encountered (40K+) probably also fueled their belief of a now non-worthy-of-traffic website.

      Given that some of these pages had been online for almost a decade, I would love Google to see that these pages are actually new versions of the old page, and therefore pass on any link juice & authority. I had the idea of submitting a sitemap containing the most important URLs of the old website (as harvested from the Top Visited Pages from Google Analytics, because no old sitemap was ever generated...), thereby re-pointing Google to all these old pages, but presenting them with a nice 301 redirect this time instead, hopefully causing them to regain their rankings. To your best knowledge, would that help the problems I've outlined above? Could it hurt?

      Any other tips are welcome as well.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • GeoffKenyon
        GeoffKenyon last edited by

        Hi There,

        As the other people have said here, 2 weeks isn't very long for Google to sort this out, though I know it feels like a really long time. While Google and Bing say they will treat 302's as 301's if they think it's a mistake, but I haven't really seen this happen.

        Whenever I do a URL migration, I always submit a sitemap with the old URLs to help Google pick up the 301's faster. In your situation, I'd definitely submit an xml sitemap of as many old URLs as you can find to help Google pick up the updated redirects ASAP. Do you have any old files that you could pull URLs from (I know you don't have an old xml sitemap, but maybe a csv or something like that)?

        Good luck!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Kurt_Steinbrueck
          Kurt_Steinbrueck last edited by

          You're right that the search engines are treating the new pages like...well...new pages.  It has nothing to do with how much code has changed and everything to do with the fact that they simply have new URLs.

          I agree with Alan.  Two weeks isn't a terribly long time.  Obviously, it's best to have all your ducks in a row from the start, but I think there's good chance that just from setting up the proper redirects for the pages the site should now transfer, though it may take few weeks and you may not get completely back to where you were.

          As far as submitting the sitemap for all the old pages, I'm not sure what that would do.  It's possible it may do exactly what you want, basically tell Google about all the redirects, but then again, Google may think it's a bit odd putting up a sitemap to redirected pages.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • AlanMosley
            AlanMosley last edited by

            My guess is the large number of 404's was wasting your link juice(100%), also you will lose something from all the 301's (approx 15%),

            as for the source code changing I would not worry about change itself. as long as the code has no problems. It a change in content that is the concern.

            some other points,

            2 weeks is not a long time for things to sort themselves out with this many pages.

            You don't need to 301 redirect all the pages, just the ones that had external links.

            Also just for interest, Bing treats a 302(temp) that has been in place for a long time as a 301, likewise a 301(permanent) that keeps changing is treated as a 302. Maybe google does the same, I don't know.

            I would fix all the 404s and wait

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            Browse Questions

            Explore more categories

            • Moz Tools

              Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

            • SEO Tactics

              Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

            • Community

              Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

            • Digital Marketing

              Chat about tactics outside of SEO

            • Research & Trends

              Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

            • Support

              Connect on product support and feature requests.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • tejasbansode

              Is 301 redirect the only way when using Vanity URLs?

              We have been using vanity urls for some of our pages. Mostly the pages that have a vanity URL have a long URL length. But now the problem is, the vanity URL is getting displayed on the search engine when the particular keyword related to the page is entered. I checked the google search console, the vanity URL is indexed and the original URL remains unindexed. What should I do? Is adding 301 redirect to the vanity URLs are solution? Since some of vanity URLs are not redirecting to the original. Some of the original pages are not getting traffic. Also, can using canonical tag help?

              Technical SEO | | tejasbansode
              0
            • mollykathariner_ms

              I have a question about the impact of a root domain redirect on site-wide redirects and slugs.

              I have a question about the impact (if any) of site-wide redirects for DNS/hosting change purposes. I am preparing to redirect the domain for a site I manage from https://siteImanage.com to https://www.siteImanage.com. Traffic to the site currently redirects in reverse, from https://www.siteImanage.com to https://siteImanage.com. Based on my research, I understand that making this change should not affect the site’s excellent SEO as long as my canonical tags are updated and a 301 redirect is in place. But I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a potential consequence of this switch I’m not considering. Because this redirect lives at the root of all the site’s slugs and existing redirects, will it technically produce a redirect chain or a redirect loop? If it does, is that problematic? Thanks for your input!

              Technical SEO | | mollykathariner_ms
              0
            • rwat

              Redirect and ranking issue

              Hi there - was wondering whether someone might be able to help. For a period of a day and a half, all the traffic to our website's blog articles were mistakenly being redirected to our homepage. A number of these articles ranked in the top 5 in Google worldwide for their targeted keywords, so this was a considerable amount of organic traffic that was instantly being redirected. It was a strange site glitch and our web team rectified the error, but now all these articles have disappeared from Google rankings (not visible anywhere in the first five pages). I'm presuming this must be linked to this redirect issue - we've been advised to wait and see whether Google restores these rankings, but I'm still concerned as to whether this represents a more serious problem? We have re-indexed the pages we are most concerned about, but am not sure whether there is anything else obvious we should think to do. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be happy to hear them!

              Technical SEO | | rwat
              0
            • Kdruckenbrod

              Image Sitemap

              I currently use a program to create our sitemap (xml). It doesn't offer creating an mage sitemaps. Can someone suggest a program that would create an image sitemap? Thanks.

              Technical SEO | | Kdruckenbrod
              0
            • Therealmattyd

              301 Redirects in subfolders

              Hi, we're making our site into a static site but I would like to transfer the Google juice. Most of the links and database exist on subfolders though. Could I simply do 301 redirects on the subfolders and retain the value or does it have to be on the full domain?

              Technical SEO | | Therealmattyd
              0
            • jez000

              Http to https - is a '302 object moved' redirect losing me link juice?

              Hi guys, I'm looking at a new site that's completely under https - when I look at the http variant it redirects to the https site with "302 object moved" within the code. I got this by loading the http and https variants into webmaster tools as separate sites, and then doing a 'fetch as google' across both. There is some traffic coming through the http option, and as people start linking to the new site I'm worried they'll link to the http variant, and the 302 redirect to the https site losing me ranking juice from that link. Is this a correct scenario, and if so, should I prioritise moving the 302 to a 301? Cheers, Jez

              Technical SEO | | jez000
              0
            • sjcbayona-41218

              Rel=Canonical on a page with 302 redirection existing

              Hi SEOMoz! Can I have the rel=canonical tag on a URL page that has a 302 redirection? Does this harm the search engine friendliness of a content page / website? Thanks! Steve

              Technical SEO | | sjcbayona-41218
              0
            • upick-162391

              Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?

              I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?

              Technical SEO | | upick-162391
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.