The difference between a permanent and a temporary redirect decides whether your rankings transfer to the new URL or get stuck on the old one. Using the wrong one is a quiet, common, and costly mistake. Here's how to choose.
A redirect's status code isn't a technicality, it's an instruction about whether the move is forever or just for now, and search engines act on it.
A 301 says "this page has moved permanently." Search engines respond by transferring ranking signals to the new URL and replacing the old URL in their index. A 302 says "this is a temporary detour; the original will be back." Search engines respond by keeping the original URL indexed and holding off on transferring signals. Both send a user to the same place, but they tell search engines opposite things about which URL matters, and that difference decides where your rankings end up.
Match the status code to whether the change is permanent.
Renaming or restructuring URLs, consolidating duplicate pages, migrating to HTTPS or a new domain, merging old content into a new page: anything where the old URL is gone for good. The 301 transfers authority to the new URL and replaces the old one in the index. This is the redirect you'll use the vast majority of the time.
A temporary promotion or A/B test, a page briefly down for maintenance, or geo/device routing where the original URL must stay indexed. The key word is temporary: you want the original URL to remain the indexed one because it's coming back. If you're not sure the change is temporary, it probably isn't: use a 301.
The audit flags 302s used where a 301 belongs, because it's such a common and silent error.
The damaging case is a 302 used for a permanent move. Because the 302 tells Google to keep the old URL indexed, the new page struggles to take over the rankings, authority doesn't transfer cleanly, and the old, now-empty URL can linger in results. Many platforms and frameworks default to a 302 (or an ambiguous "found" redirect) unless you explicitly specify a 301, so this happens by accident constantly. After any migration, verify that your permanent redirects actually return a 301, not a 302, and that they go directly to the final URL without forming a chain.
Google has said a long-lived 302 may be treated like a 301 over time, on the reasoning that a redirect left in place for months was probably meant to be permanent. That is a fallback behaviour, not a guarantee.
The transfer is slower and less certain than an explicit 301, and you have no visibility into when or whether it happens. Don't rely on it: if the move is permanent, declare a 301 so authority transfers promptly and predictably rather than waiting on an inference.
308 is the permanent equivalent of 307 in HTTP terms, mirroring the 301 and 302 pair but preserving the request method rather than allowing it to change to GET.
For SEO purposes the key distinction is still permanent (301 or 308) against temporary (302 or 307), and search engines treat the permanent pair alike. Most sites should use 301 for permanent moves; the method-preserving variants matter mainly for non-GET requests, such as redirecting a POST endpoint, where changing the method would break the request.
A single, direct 301 passes nearly all link equity, so the redirect itself is not where value goes missing.
Value is lost from what surrounds it: chains, loops, using a 302 by mistake, or redirecting to an irrelevant page, such as sending every dead URL to the homepage, which can be treated as a soft 404. The rule that covers all of these is to redirect directly, permanently, and to the most relevant live page.
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