302 Redirects OnDomain - Bad for linkbuilding?

Hi there,

I just do work for a client. Following scenario:

Their main domain is www.example.com and it redirect per 302 to www.example.com/content/index_ger.html

They do this to keep Google showing up www.example.com in the serps and not the nasty long url string.

As i never had to do with this case, I checked back and found many diverse opinions. Some say it is usual practice and no link juice is gone

http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/when-to-use-a-301-vs-302-redirect/

and some say it is a no-go in terms of seo.

Also Google did some changes how they handle 302

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/

I don't get it at all. Are the built links to the domain root useless unless the the 302 is removed or is it okay?

Thank you for your thoughts.

edit:

Majestic shows me


Does site use 302 and 307? Confusing...

See, if you have set 302 redirect this will not pass your credit to other domain because, SEs knows that you are temporarily on new domain.

One you remove 302 redirect you will get the credit of link building to your original domain.

For passing on credit to other domain you have to transfer it permanently to new domain.

Kaithe.Clarke said:

See, if you have set 302 redirect this will not pass your credit to other domain because, SEs knows that you are temporarily on new domain.

One you remove 302 redirect you will get the credit of link building to your original domain.

For passing on credit to other domain you have to transfer it permanently to new domain.

Click to expand...

You did not got me. The domain is the same. 302 redirects to a subpage (samedomain.com/content/index_ger.html)

302 is not prefered, but it depends how its done... what ever you do treat search engines the same as users.

302 tells SE that the page has temporarily moved to a different location. It is not optimal and you shouldn't have it. Is it really hurting? I can't tell you this because I don't work for Google and I haven't tried it out because it's not optimal.

Just get rid of the 302. Is there any reason not to do so? It's not proper web design. That way you don't have to second guess whether it is hurting the site. I doubt anyone outside of Google can speak with authority on how much this is hurting the site - it's just not a common scenario that anyone would have taken the time to test.

Yes, I am completely with you. But could you check the article of Matt Cutts, which i posted in OP. I don't know if I get it right. I understand it like that: It is common to use 302 if your homepage redirects to an certain URL-string behind it on the same domain and if you want to appear only with the root domain in the serps (without the string) then it is advised to use 302.

Can anyone confirm this?

I think that Matt is saying that in certain instances, Google will continue to show the root domain because it is more user-friendly. But still, 302 is supposed to tell the search engine that the page is "moved temporarily" - so for me this is for an instance like if for example you had an e-commerce site, but around the holidays, you wanted it to re-direct straight to your christmas sales page. Or around halloween it would redirect straight to your halloween page - etc.

If it's hard to move the structure of the site, I would suggest using a rewrite rule to display the www.example.com/content/index_ger.html when the browser hits root. This would get rid of the redirect, display the correct page, and not require you to make structural changes. As far as the browser is concerned it would be at the root domain, but behind the scenes, the server would use the index_ger.html document to populate the home page.