web dev//SEO//redirect

A redirect is a response that sends the client from one URL to another.

A redirect is a response that sends the client from one URL to another.

An address with a sign on the door.

The visitor arrives and reads that the place has moved, and where to.

It is an HTTP status (301 permanent, 302 or 307 temporary) plus a Location header; the browser or the fetcher follows it. A permanent redirect tells the indexer to transfer the old URL's standing to the new one.

Chains of redirects cost a fetch each and eventually get cut off; loops make the page unreachable. Redirects are also how legacy URLs stay valid after a site restructures, as this site does for its old note paths.

DNS cannot redirect. A DNS record only says which machine answers for a name; moving old.com to new.com takes that machine answering with a 301, so a domain change needs both the records and the redirect rules.

A redirect changes where the client is; a canonical only changes which copy gets the credit.