: "302 found" for index page bad for SEO? I'm having trouble finding a clear answer on this. I'm optimizing someone else's website, and a tool pointed out that the index page returns a "302

@Kevin317

It also sounds bad that cookie info is in the URL itself. It would indicate that every URL is different. Your making it very hard for a Search Engine to find the content and associate it with a valid URL for indexing.

A secondary issue is every visitor will have a different URL. If they decide to link to you or use social media then every user will be linking to a different page and therefore non of the pages will become popular.

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@Samaraweera270

Yes, it is bad for SEO when the index page has a 302 redirect.

Matt Cutts discusses this scenario in an old blog post from 2006: www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/

for on-domain 302 redirects (that is,
a redirect in which both the source
page and the destination page are both
on the same domain), search engines
will usually pick the shorter url.


It's better for SEO when the search engines don't have to make those choices.

Incredibly, his off-domain redirect example for sfgiants.com still has the same sub-optimal behaviour today.

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