What is Redirects?
By SearchChamp teamUpdated
A redirect is an HTTP response that tells a browser or crawler that the requested URL has moved — either permanently or temporarily — to a new location. The redirect type is specified by the HTTP status code: 301 (Moved Permanently) is the standard redirect for permanent URL changes and passes full link equity to the destination; 302 (Found) is temporary and is interpreted by Google as passing no link equity by default, though in practice Google has stated it passes PageRank through 302s after the pattern is observed to be stable; 307 (Temporary Redirect) is the HTTP/1.1 equivalent of 302 and preserves the HTTP method (GET stays GET, POST stays POST); 308 (Permanent Redirect) is the HTTP/1.1 equivalent of 301 with method preservation. In SEO practice, 301 is the workhorse — used for site migrations, URL restructuring, domain changes, and broken URL cleanup. 302 is appropriate for truly temporary changes (A/B tests, seasonal campaigns) where the original URL will return.
Redirects in context
For years, an SEO myth held that 301 redirects caused a "link equity loss" of 15-25% — that PageRank passing through a redirect was taxed versus a direct link. Google's Gary Illyes confirmed in 2016 that this was no longer true: 301 and 302 redirects both pass PageRank with no meaningful loss. The practical concern today is not equity loss but redirect chains. A redirect chain is a sequence where URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects to URL C — each hop adds latency (50-100ms per hop) and makes the equity flow harder to trace. Best practice: resolve any chain to a single hop (A redirects directly to C). A redirect loop — A redirects to B, B redirects back to A — makes the URL inaccessible to crawlers and browsers alike. Modern CDNs and reverse proxies (Cloudflare, Vercel, Nginx) handle redirects at the edge, adding near-zero latency for end users while preserving the correct status code for crawlers.
Example
A SaaS company restructures their blog from /blog/post-title to /resources/blog/post-title for a navigation overhaul. They have 145 blog posts. Without redirects: all 145 old URLs return 404, all existing backlinks pointing to the old structure lose their equity, and Google sees 145 broken pages. With 301 redirects from each old URL to the corresponding new URL: all backlink equity transfers to the new structure, Google recrawls and updates its index within 2-4 weeks, and there is zero traffic loss from the migration. A secondary check: verifying no redirect chains (e.g., old /blog/ URL was already redirected once before the migration, creating a 2-hop chain) — those get collapsed to single-hop 301s.
Related terms
Common questions about Redirects.
An HTTP status code that tells browsers and search engines a URL has moved permanently to a new location, and to use the new URL going forward. It's the standard redirect for permanent URL changes — site migrations, URL restructuring, domain changes — and passes essentially full ranking signal to the destination once Google observes the redirect is stable.
Yes, as confirmed by Google's Gary Illyes in 2016 and reiterated multiple times since. The earlier "15-25% equity loss through redirects" was based on outdated Googlebot behavior. In 2026, 301 redirects pass PageRank at essentially 100% after the redirect is observed to be stable (typically within a few crawl cycles). The bigger concern is redirect chains — each additional hop reduces crawlability and user experience, even if equity passes cleanly.
302 is for genuinely temporary changes: A/B tests, seasonal landing pages, or temporary outages where the original URL will be restored. Using 302 for permanent moves is a common mistake — Google eventually treats a stable 302 like a 301, but there's a delay and ambiguity. When in doubt about permanence, use 301. The redirect can always be updated if circumstances change.
A server-side redirect (301/302/307/308) is sent in the HTTP response header before any page content loads — crawlers see it instantly and it's the reliable, recommended method. A client-side redirect (a JavaScript redirect, or a meta refresh tag) requires the browser or crawler to load and execute page content first, adding latency and depending on the crawler actually rendering JavaScript. Server-side redirects are strongly preferred for SEO; reserve client-side redirects for cases where server-side isn't technically possible.
A redirect chain is when URL A redirects to B, which redirects to C (or longer). Every hop adds HTTP round-trip latency (50-100ms per hop), meaning users on a 3-hop chain wait an extra 200ms. More importantly, Googlebot may not follow chains beyond 5 hops, and link equity attribution becomes murky in long chains. Audit your redirects quarterly and collapse any chain longer than 1 hop to a direct redirect to the final destination.
A redirect loop is when URL A redirects to B and B redirects back to A — an infinite cycle. Both browsers and crawlers detect loops and return a browser error ("This page isn't redirecting properly" in Chrome). Loops are most commonly caused by: misconfigured CDN rules that override server-side redirects, conflicting HTTPS/HTTP canonicalization rules, or incorrect htaccess or nginx redirect logic. Fix by tracing the exact redirect path (use curl -I or a redirect checker tool) and identifying which rule creates the circular reference.
Yes — each hop in a chain consumes crawl budget that could otherwise go toward discovering new or updated content, and a long enough chain risks Googlebot abandoning it before reaching the final destination. On large sites with thousands of URLs, accumulated redirect chains are a meaningful, often-overlooked drain on how much of the site gets crawled and re-crawled.
Each redirect hop adds a full HTTP round trip before the browser can even start loading the destination page, directly increasing Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Time to First Byte. A single redirect is usually a minor cost, but chains of 2+ hops — especially combined with slow DNS lookups or a client-side JavaScript redirect — can push a page from a 'Good' to a 'Needs Improvement' Core Web Vitals rating on mobile connections.
Both signal a preferred URL, but they solve different problems. A 301 redirect physically sends users and crawlers to a new URL — the old URL stops resolving as itself. A canonical tag lets the old URL remain fully accessible and functional while telling search engines which version to index and rank; use it when multiple live URLs need to stay reachable (parameter variants, duplicate content) rather than when a URL has genuinely moved.
SearchChamp's Site Auditor crawls your site and maps every redirect, identifying chains (2+ hops), loops, and redirects pointing to 404 pages. For manual auditing: use curl -IL to trace the full redirect chain from any URL. In Google Search Console, the Coverage report flags "Redirect Error" issues. Screaming Frog's free tier crawls up to 500 URLs and maps redirect chains by default.
301 redirects and internationalization solve different problems and shouldn't be conflated. Redirecting all visitors from one country to a locale-specific URL based on IP or browser language is a common but risky pattern — it can prevent Googlebot (which typically crawls from the US) from ever discovering your other locale pages. Use hreflang tags to signal locale alternatives to search engines, and reserve redirects for actual URL moves, not locale routing.
Page-by-page (1:1) redirects — mapping each old URL to its exact corresponding new URL — consistently outperform a single sitewide redirect to the new homepage. A sitewide catch-all redirect loses the specific topical relevance of each old page and typically causes a larger, longer-lasting traffic and ranking dip during a domain migration.
Yes, though the effect is smaller than an external migration. An internal link pointing through a redirect instead of directly to the final URL still passes equity, but it adds an unnecessary crawl hop and can obscure your internal link graph. Update internal links to point directly at the final destination whenever you set up a permanent redirect — this is exactly the kind of chain SearchChamp's Site Audit flags.
Map every redirect chain, loop, and dead end.
SearchChamp’s Site Audit traces your redirects, flags chains and loops, and catches links pointing at 404s — so a migration doesn’t quietly leak link equity. 7-day free trial.