What is a Redirect?

Similar Terms:

301 Redirect, 302 Redirect, Meta Refresh Redirect

A page setup to redirect a visitor automatically to another page. There are several methods of setting up a redirect and what you use depends on what you want to serve to the visitor and search engines.

A 301 Redirect is a temporary redirection that automatically sends a visitor to a new page. A search engine bot will ignore the redirect page, indexing and ranking the new page.

A 302 Redirect is a permanent redirection that does the same thing as a 301 but search engines view it differently, indexing the original redirect page but getting the content from the new site.

A Meta-refresh Redirect is not strictly a redirect and should only be used if a 301 Redirect is not available. It is a small line of code in the header of a page that tells the browser to refresh after a period of time (set to zero for an immediate refresh) and can include a new URL to display (the redirect).