How long is it safe to use a 302 redirect?

[BenRush]

Hi All,

Lets assume there is site A and site B, both sites are live on the internet today as standalone businesses, but they sell very similar products.

Site B has built up some link equity and will eventually become the domain for site A due to an organisational re-brand.

For the time being however site A will remain, but site B needs to disappear temporarily, but not lose the link equity which has been built up against it.

My current thinking is to 302 redirect site B to site A such that users and search bots accessing site B will be redirected to site A whilst leaving the link equity that exists against site B fully intact and allowing us to continue to grow it should we wish to.

The question is, does anybody have a view on how long it is safe to use a 302 temporary redirect for? i.e., is 8-10 months to long.

Thanks,

Ben

[BenRush]

Thanks this is the kind of 2nd opinion I was looking for

[BenRush]

Hi Ryan,

Sure, I've had 302's in place for years on some domains myself but this was more a question around two parts I guess:

1. Has anyone seen it potentially have an impact to the site the 302 is pointing at?
2. Has anyone found that having a 302 in place for a long period of time then has an impact on that domains ability to get re-picked up and indexed should the 302 become a 200 again.

If you take the "best practice" conversation out of the equation then my own personal view is there is no real risk in having a 302 in place for a considerable period of time.

Ben

[RyanKent]

Ben,

What exactly do you mean by "safe"? You CAN permanently use a 302. There is nothing preventing a webmaster from using a 302 for years. I would never advise doing such, but you are certainly able to do it if you were so inclined.

[Hurf]

Okay. After re-reading the question (with my eyes open this time) I understand that the fact that no link jiuce will be passed to Site A (from Site B) is not an issue, rather you don't want to lose the existing link equity when you switch Site B back on and then 301 redirect Site A to Site B?

So, with that in mind - there is no specified 'acceptable' time limit attached to a 302 redirect, so you should be able to redirect without fear of being penalised, regardless of duration.

This is mentioned elsewhere on SEOMoz here: http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/9994/302-redirect-timeframe

This is an interesting read however: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/007233.html - just to keep things edgy ;o)

[BenRush]

I know what best practice is folks - the question is "how long is it safe to use a 302 temporary redirect?"

[Hurf]

Don't 302 in this case. Infact, don't 302 if at all possible as it passes ZERO link juice - 301 for this and get 90%+ link juice passed on. It does sound counter intuitive - certainly based on the titles MOVED PERMANENTLY etc but it is the best practice in this instance.

301 Moved Permanently

A 301 Redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.

302 Found (HTTP 1.1) / Moved Temporarily (HTTP 1.0)

A 302 Redirect is a temporary redirect and passes 0% of link juice (ranking power) and in most cases should not be used. The Internet runs on a protocol called HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which dictates how URLs work. It has two major versions, 1.0 and 1.1. In the first version 302 referred to the status code 'Moved Temporarily'. This was changed in version 1.1 to mean 'Found'.

Extract from

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

[RyanKent]

The question is, does anybody have a view on how long it is safe to use a 302 temporary redirect for? i.e., is 8-10 months to long.

302's are for very small time frames such as a couple days. If you are looking for a suggested max time for a 302 I'll throw a month out as an absolute max, and that would probably be too long. I would be interested to hear feedback from other Mozzers on this topic.

Given your circumstance, I would 301 the pages, then 8-10 months later when the merger happens cancel the 301.

As long as the sites which currently link to Site B maintain their links, and those sites maintain their authority, then site B would not lose it's link equity. You are merely passing 90%+ of that link equity to site B for the 10 month downtime period.