: 302 Moved Temporarily or 301? HTTP status code checker tool shows HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily for the home page URL http://someurl.com (just a namesake URL). Also, this URL opens up http://www.someurl.com/general/index.

@Sarah324

Please don't do 302 redirect for your home page. I would prefer that you do a 301 redirect.

You can also use Google Webmaster Tools to set up your preferred domain.

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@Fox8124981

Those are the answers to your question:


In this case you should use a 301 (permanent redirect) because this is a definitive change of the behavior of that URL
This will not affect your website in anyway. The search engine will still be able to index your pages in the right way. They, of course, will update your old homepage with the new one (/general/index)
It's not a bad practice but in my opinion you should change this behavios simply using an .htaccess. So the incoming request to the old index will be served by the new homepage.

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@Yeniel560

If you want to redirect example.com => example.com (or vice versa), then use a 301. If you want to redirect the root URL to an internal path, example.com => example.com/general/index then use a 302.

The internal redirection isn't necessary a bad practice. Sometimes CMS impose this redirect because the CMS package needs to be installed in subfolders and/or generates a custom homepage URL.

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