Mistake: treating all 3xx in logs as harmless redirects

Mistake: treating all 3xx in logs as harmless redirects

Status mining that ignores the difference hides crawl-budget leaks. Hand-picked:

→ Google Search Central (redirects) — A 302 keeps the old URL in the crawl rotation far longer than a 301. Logs full of 302s to a final URL waste fetches.
Takeaway: count 302s by target; convert repeat offenders to 301.

→ MDN HTTP status reference — 307/308 method-preservation nuances that change how bots re-request.
Takeaway: don't lump 301/302/307/308 into one bucket.

★ Pick of the week — a redirect-chain awk one-liner — Walks the log to find URLs that 3xx more than once before a 200.
Takeaway: flag chains of length ≥2 — each hop is a wasted Googlebot request.