What Is 302 Redirect?

How a 302 Redirect Works

A 302 redirect is a server’s way of saying “the thing you asked for is over here for now.” When a client requests a URL, the server responds with the status line 302 Found and a Location header naming a different address. The browser automatically follows that header and requests the new URL, so the visitor is forwarded without friction — the same seamless experience a 301 produces. The difference is entirely in what the code communicates about permanence.

That distinction is decisive for search engines. Google Search Central places 302 in its temporary-redirect category, which means Google keeps the original URL in search results and does not canonicalize to the target. No ranking signals move to the destination. The assumption baked into a 302 is that the source URL will come back, so search engines preserve it rather than replacing it. This is the opposite of a permanent redirect’s canonicalization behavior.

The “Found” phrasing is a historical quirk worth knowing. In HTTP/1.0 the 302 code was labeled “Moved Temporarily”; later HTTP versions kept the number but renamed the reason phrase to “Found.” Clients and crawlers key off the numeric code, not the phrase, so the meaning — a temporary redirect — has never changed.

When a 302 Is the Right Choice

A 302 is not a broken 301. It is the correct tool whenever the redirect genuinely should not move the page’s identity or authority:

• A/B and multivariate tests — routing a slice of traffic to a variant while keeping the original URL as the real, indexable page.
• Maintenance and outages — sending visitors to a status page while the real URL is briefly unavailable, without wanting Google to swap the maintenance page in as canonical.
• Short-lived campaigns and seasonal pages — forwarding a permanent URL to a limited-time landing page that will retire.
• Geo, currency, or device routing — temporarily steering a user to a localized version while the requested URL remains legitimate in its own right.

In every one of these cases you want the source URL to stay indexed and keep its signals. The failure mode is the mirror image: reaching for a 302 during a permanent move, where you actually need Google to transfer authority to the new page.

The 302 and 307 Method Nuance

Like a 301, a 302 does not perfectly preserve the request method. Under the Fetch Standard, a browser receiving a 302 in response to a POST converts the method to GET on the redirected request, dropping the body. When a redirect must keep the method and payload intact — for example forwarding a form submission or an API write — the temporary-redirect code that preserves the method is 307 Temporary Redirect, which prohibits altering the method. A related code, 303 See Other, does the reverse on purpose: it forces any method to become GET, useful for responding to a PUT or POST with a confirmation page rather than the uploaded resource. All three — 302, 303, 307 — are temporary in Google’s eyes.

Example of a 302 Redirect

A minimal, standards-documented 302 exchange looks like this, per MDN’s HTTP reference. A client requests a profile page and the server temporarily forwards it:

GET /profile HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Location: https://www.example.com/new-profile-url
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 0

The response body is empty; all the meaningful information is in the status line and the Location header. The browser reads 302 Found, follows Location to /new-profile-url, and shows the visitor that page. Because the code is 302 rather than 301, a search engine crawling /profile treats the forwarding as provisional: it keeps /profile as the indexed, canonical URL and declines to move any ranking signals to /new-profile-url. Swap the single digit — 302 to 301 — and the SEO outcome inverts completely, even though the visitor’s experience is byte-for-byte identical. That is the whole reason the distinction is worth getting right.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

A 302 redirect forwards a visitor to a new address while telling search engines the original page is only away for a while. That temporary framing is a feature when the move really is short-lived — a test, a seasonal landing page, a maintenance detour — and a liability when it isn’t, because Google leaves the old URL indexed and passes no authority onward. Match the code to the intent: temporary means 302, permanent means 301.