Q: Everyone says 'use 301 for migrations' — but is 302 ever the right call?

Q: Everyone says 'use 301 for migrations' — but is 302 ever the right call?

Yes, occasionally — and picking wrong is one of the most common reasons traffic doesn't recover.

Short answer: 301 (permanent) for anything you're moving for good. 302 (temporary) only when the move genuinely reverses soon.

Long answer:
A 301 tells Google 'consolidate signals to the new URL forever' — it passes ranking equity. That's what you want for a domain change, replatform, or HTTPS move.

A 302 says 'keep indexing the old one, this is temporary.' Use it for a short A/B test, a seasonal landing page, or a maintenance page that lasts days.

The trap: many platforms and CDNs default to 302. People migrate, assume 301, and signals never transfer. Always inspect the actual status code, don't trust the setting label.

Next step: crawl your live redirects and confirm each migration hop returns 301, not 302.