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
      • SEO Q&A
      • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • 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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Does a 302 redirect pass penalties?

    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.

    Does a 302 redirect pass penalties?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    10
    3359
    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.
    • MattBarker
      MattBarker last edited by

      I'm having problems finding a definitive answer to this question, there is a lot of rumour and gossip out there but nothing I can rely on.

      I'm working with a site that received an unnatural links notice followed by a massive drop in search traffic. Looking at the link profile it's pretty much jacked beyond repair and I have recommended that we move over to a fresh domain.

      However, it's an established brand with many more sources of traffic than organic search. There's no way we can burn all their repeat visits, loyal customers, brand recognition that they've built up over the years so I want to redirect from the old domain to the new.  This is not to try and make any SEO gain from the previous site, frankly we don't give a crap about that. We just want to maintain the brand.

      A 302 is a temporary redirect, this will be a permanent move BUT a 301 will pass on the penalty.  So can we safely use a 302 redirect in this situation or is there a better alternative (meta refresh?)

      Thanks for your help!

      MB.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MattBarker
        MattBarker @SEOdub last edited by

        Cheers Chris. Something like that would be a good fallback plan, but in our case the referral and direct traffic is way more important than organic search.

        In the absence of any better solution and because we can't ditch the brand and all the non-SEO traffic we've decided to go down the cleanup route.  Even if it doesn't work it's better than sacrificing the referral and direct traffic the brand gets.  Sucks that there seems to be no better solution to this problem, it seems like a common issue.

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

          I assume you have already considered this but a more sure way to keep the continuity (most) of traffic without passing the penalty would be to set individual landing pages on the old domain (for each important URL) with a notice about the new site and a large no follow link to forward to tcorrelating page on the new domain. You would need to create a lot of pages but it is a solution, albeit one with a poor user experience so it's probably a last resort (better than a 404).

          I have a client caught in an algorithmic penalty and am searching these same sources for answers.  It seems that sometimes a 301 can avert the penalty but ussually does not.  Were gonna try it, if it doesn't work we might be exactly where your client is now looking at a new clean domain and 302's (maybe).

          Good Luck!

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

            I would still love to know if anyone has any more concrete information on this question.  At the moment it seems like people like my client find themselves in an intractable problem:

            • Recovering is highly unlikely, so it's often easier to save the brand and move to a new domain

            • But doing so means you have to relinquish all your previous brand recognition and loyalty (NOT your old site's SEO) because using a 301 OR a 302 redirect will pass along the penalty

            So is there no way of redirecting a domain that will not pass any SEO value and/or the penalty?  If you don't care about the old site's SEO status or links and you just want to start anew, is it also impossible to retain the branded traffic & repeat visitors from the old site?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • KeriMorgret
              KeriMorgret @BlueprintMarketing last edited by

              Can you share some of the information that led you to that conclusion?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • BlueprintMarketing
                BlueprintMarketing @MattBarker last edited by

                Hi Matthew,

                I had assumed that you were trying to wipe the slate clean. However because you were talking about redirecting links from any source at all. I assume that you would be trying to 302 redirect a link for me what was once bad source to a now clean slate or new source. My history of helping people with this and knowledge personally on the subject tells me do not do it I would strongly advise against doing it. However there is an SCO company you may feel more comfortable in speaking with that will give you the same definite answer.

                I would try the guys atDistilled, or Virantehttp://www.virante.org/Virante is a Company that is endorsed by Moz & The reason I'm speaking about them is they make a tool called http://www.removeem.com/They deal quite a bit with penalties and link removal. So not that you are looking to remove links however they would give you a very definite yes or no and from what I've experienced myself it is not really wiping the slate clean and less you truly are wiping the slate clean and that means having webmasters that have valid links not the ones that got you in trouble obviously asked for them to change the link so that it is still link to you if they'll actually do it. There's no way you're going to retain  your ranking from this you're going to have to start from scratch and do some RCS.Sorry if my answer was not clear enough. Respectfully, Thomas

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • MattBarker
                  MattBarker @AndreVanKets last edited by

                  Thanks Greg,

                  I had seen that previous discussion, it's pretty much the most useful content I could find on the subject. Except it's well over 12 months old, and it pretty clearly establishes that 301 redirects do pass penalties immediately.

                  Given we're moving the site to escape a penalty it would be crazy to use a 301 redirect when we know that is going to pass on the penalty.

                  My question is whether a 302 redirect will pass a penalty. In theory it shouldn't because it doesn't pass PageRank or other SEO metrics, so would it pass a penalty?

                  It's nuts that there's no more definitive information on something that should be so easy to test and answer.  Is there no advice from Moz or any of the other authorities on this?

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

                    Hi Mathew,

                    There was an interesting discussion on this subject on another question thread here

                    There was no definite yes or no to your question, some people experienced the penalty being passed over and others didn't. In theory, if 301's passed penalty, webmasters could 301 all their "dead" sites to competitors and this would be a mission for Google to control should the 301 pass over the penalty.

                    Based on Rands comments in that thread, he believes 301's dont pass on any penalties and it may be due to other factors that contribute to the low rankings on the new sites since implementing the 301.

                    My suggestion would be to go ahead and do the permanent redirect. As you say, you cant afford loosing return customers. Let us know how it goes.

                    Greg

                    MattBarker 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • MattBarker
                      MattBarker @BlueprintMarketing last edited by

                      Thanks for taking the time to share your opinion Thomas, but respectfully it looks like you misinterpreted my question. I'm very clear that we're not trying to do this to benefit from any old spam links - we're doing this to wipe the slate clean on all that.  But this is a brand we're talking about - people reach the site from all sorts of sources, referrals & reviews, WoM, repeat/loyal visitors, etc.

                      We don't give a damn about the negligible SEO value of the old site but we care very much about not losing our non-organic search visitors as they're all that's sustaining the business right now.

                      So if it's true that both 301 and 302 redirects pass on a penalty that means that Google is screwing with us even when we're trying to wipe the slate clean.  That's just insane even by their standards - now they're trying to penalise people beyond the realm of organic search!

                      But does anyone have any incontrovertible proof that this is the case?  Have Moz or any other authorities done any experiments on this?

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

                        hi,

                        I can tell you with absolute certainty if you have set up 302's out of what was your old website and Google checks that which they will because you said there Penalizing you.

                        "I'm working with a site that received an unnatural links notice followed by a massive drop in search traffic. Looking at the link profile it's pretty much jacked beyond repair and I have recommended that we move over to a fresh domain."

                        I would unfortunately have to recommend strongly that you if moving to note new domain literally begin again. If of course you have relevant links from high quality sources yes those can be 301 redirected.

                        If you think that Google will let you simply 302 bad links to your new site you are going to be in for a very tough time with Google.

                        It's extremely important to follow the rules and not to try to manipulate them in any way shape or form if they feel that you are trying to benefit from what they think is spam to put it nicely they will come down on you much harder. I know it's not the answer you want to hear. However,I know for a fact you should not do that and if you do you will simply be penalized again.

                        Recommend using open web explore along with majestic SEO to find the relevant back links and see if there's a way to salvage some of them. Through webmasters changing the quality links. Most likely white hat webmasters are likely to respond and be more friendly than black hat webmasters. Though I know I'm not telling you anything new everyone's unique.

                        I wish you the best on this sincerely,

                        Thomas

                        MattBarker KeriMorgret 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 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

                        • amag

                          Would You Redirect a Page if the Parent Page was Redirected?

                          Hi everyone! Let's use this as an example URL: https://www.example.com/marvel/avengers/hulk/ We have done a 301 redirect for the "Avengers" page to another page on the site. Sibling pages of the "Hulk" page live off "marvel" now (ex: /marvel/thor/ and /marvel/iron-man/). Is there any benefit in doing a 301 for the "Hulk" page to live at /marvel/hulk/ like it's sibling pages? Is there any harm long-term in leaving the "Hulk" page under a permanently redirected page? Thank you! Matt

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amag
                          0
                        • WeAreDigital_BE

                          Geo-Redirect: good idea or not?

                          Hi Mozzers, The background: I have this very corporate .com domain which is used worldwide. Next to that, we have another .com domain which is specifically created for the US visitors. Within the organic rankings, we notice that our corporate domain is ranking much better in the US. Many visitors are arriving on this domain. As it is a corporate domain being used worldwide, they get lost. My questions: I know there are ways to redirect by location. Would it be smart to automatically redirect US visitors for the corporate domain to the commercial US-specific domain? Is it possible to only redirect US visitors and leave the website as it is for visitors from other countries. Won't this harm the corporate website (organically) worldwide? If this would be a good idea, any recommended plugins or concrete procedures? Thank you so much for helping me out!
                          Sander

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
                          0
                        • co.mc

                          When should you redirect a domain completely?

                          We moved a website over to a new domain name. We used 301 redirects to redirect all the pages individually (around 150 redirects). So my question is, when should we just kill the old site completely and just redirect (forward/point) the old domain over to the new one?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc
                          0
                        • eukmark

                          What are the effects of having Multiple Redirects for pages under the same domain

                          Dear Mozers, First of all let me wish you all a Very Happy, Prosperous, Healthy, Joyous & Successful New Year ! I'm trying to analyze one of the website's Web Hosting UK Com Ltd. and during this process I've had this question running through my mind. This project has been live since the year 2003 and since then there have be changes made to the website (obviously). There have also been new pages been added, the same way some new pages have even been over-written with changes in the url structures too. Now, coming back to the question, if I've have a particular url structure in the past when the site was debuted and until date the structure has been changes thrice (for example) with a 301 redirect to every back dated structure, WOULD it impact the sites performance SEOwise ? And let's say that there's hundreds of such redirections under the same domain, don't you think that after a period of time we should remove the past pages/urls from the server ? That'd certainly increase the 404 (page not found) errors, but that can be taken care of. How sensible would it be to keep redirecting the bots from one url to the other when they only visit a site for a short stipulated time? To make it simple let me explain it with a real life scenario. Say if I was staying a place A then switched to a different location in another county say B and then to C and so on, and finally got settled at a place G. When I move from one place to another, I place a note of the next destination I'm moving to so that any courier/mail etc. can be delivered to my current whereabouts. In such a case there's a less chance that the courier would travel all the destinations to deliver the package. Similarly, when a bot visits a domain and it finds multiple redirects, don't you think that it'd loose the efficiency in crawling the site? Ofcourse, imo. the redirects are important, BUT it should be there (in htaccess) for only a period of say 3-6 months. Once the search engine bots know about the latest pages, the past pages/redirects should be removed. What are your opinions about this ?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eukmark
                          0
                        • android_lyon

                          303 redirect

                          Hi, 303 redirect is a good thing or not ? I have a homepage in 2 languages FR and EN > mywebsite.com/fr/ and mywebsite.com/en/. A 303 redirect is on mywebsite.com to mywebsite.com/fr/. Thanks D.

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon
                          0
                        • bloomnation

                          DNS or 301 Website Redirect

                          We are running a marketplace site, so we have thousands of vendors selling their products on our site. Each vendor has a Profile page and we are soon to launch a premium store-front that is white label. Many of these vendors will want to point a custom url to their premium store-front (which is a sub domain of the marketplace) and we are trying to get an understanding of how we should instruct them to point their url in a way that will give the main marketplace site the seo juice. We also want to understand what will show up in the address bar.  Will it be their url or our sub domain? Will any of the marketplace seo juice boost their url local listing status?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bloomnation
                          0
                        • SEOTGT

                          301 or 302 Redirects to Mobile Site

                          When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here? Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT
                          0
                        • AndyMacLean

                          Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?

                          A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?

                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean
                          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
                        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.