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Types of Redirect

 

When setting a redirect for a domain, we have a few options.

 

On our panel, you can set:

 

  • 301 - permanent redirect
  • 302 - temporary redirect
  • Transparent - only frame, not compatible with HTTPS

 

301 - Permanent redirect

 

It is usually referred to as unmasked as well. You should use this one in cases that your old website is permanently moved to a new URL, and you also want to index search engines (for example Google, Bing, and all traffic and existing SEO values will be redirected to the new URL). 

 

This type of redirect is useful in the following situations:

  1. You moved your website to a new domain and want to make the transition flawless
  2. You want to make possible that people access your domain through different URLs, for example:
    1. http://example.com/home
    2. http://home.example.com
    3. http://www.example.com/home
    4. All of them can be redirected and show http://example.com
  3. You are merging 2 websites and want to redirect the links from the outdated pages to the new ones

 

After setting the 301 redirect, search engines can take some time to start showing the correct information as ranking and trust for the new URL, and it can take even longer if the new URL is not resolving properly, for example

 

302 - Temporary redirect

 

Recommended when a URL needs to be redirected to a new address temporarily. Search engines then index the original URL and not its destination, and also will display the original URL in their results.

 

This type of redirect is useful in the following situations:

  1. When the original URL is under maintenance, and you want to forward a visitor to a temporary page.
  2. When it is important to keep indexing the original URL, while showing the results of the new URL with the intention of using the original URL again.

 

Transparent redirect - also known as URL frame, URL masking and URL cloaking

 

It is similar to the URL redirect, however instead of sending the visitor to your page, the page is displayed in a frame from the server. So it keeps showing your URL, but showing the content from other person website.

 

Example:

 

You have a URL example-red.com that shows only a red background.

And another URL example-blue.com, that shows only a blue background. 

 

Using this type of redirect, when and redirecting example-red.com to example-blue.com, the visitor will see your link example-red.com and will see the content of the new URL, so the blue background.

 

This type of redirect has negative results with SEOs because it duplicates the content, identifying both as duplicates and deciding to serve only one. Another negative point is that not all websites allow URL framing.

 

NOTE: it doesn't work with HTTPS (SSL) websites for security reasons.