A 302 redirect (302 Found) says “this page is somewhere else for now”. The browser follows it straight away, just like a permanent redirect. The difference is in what search engines do: with a 302, Google normally keeps the original URL indexed and shows it in results, because you’ve told it the original will come back.
Its close cousin, 307 Temporary Redirect, means the same thing for SEO purposes. The permanent equivalents are 301 and 308.
When a 302 is the right choice
Temporary redirects are for situations that really are temporary:
- Bean & Barrel Coffee runs a holiday gift guide and sends
/gifts/to/gifts/holiday-2026/for six weeks, then switches it back. - A product is out of stock for a fortnight, and you point its page to the category page until it returns.
- You’re A/B testing a new landing page and splitting traffic between versions.
- A site sends visitors to a country or language version based on their location (though see the note on hreflang for international setups).
When it causes problems
The trouble starts when a 302 is used for a permanent move. If Coastline Plumbing moves its blog from /news/ to /blog/ and the hosting panel sets up 302s by default, Google may keep showing the old /news/ URLs and be slow to consolidate signals on the new ones.
Google has said it will eventually treat a long-standing 302 as permanent, but “eventually” is not a plan. If the move is permanent, use a 301 redirect and remove the guesswork.
Common mistakes
- Plugins or server configs that default to 302 without asking.
- Redirecting
httptohttpswith a 302. HTTPS moves are permanent. - Using a temporary redirect and a canonical tag pointing in the opposite direction, which gives Google two conflicting signals.
- Forgetting to remove a temporary redirect when the campaign ends.
How to check
Run the URL through the free Redirect Checker. It lists each hop, the status code at each step, and where the chain ends. In a terminal, curl -I shows the same thing:
$ curl -I https://www.example.com/gifts/
HTTP/2 302
location: https://www.example.com/gifts/holiday-2026/If the move is meant to be permanent and you see 302 there, change the rule to a 301. Also check that no temporary hop sits inside a longer redirect chain.