Change 302 redirect to 301 redirect
911 - March 30, 2009 - 11:33
| Project: | User Referral |
| Version: | 6.x-1.x-dev |
| Component: | Code: referral |
| Category: | feature request |
| Priority: | normal |
| Assigned: | Unassigned |
| Status: | needs review |
Description
I checkt the header status of the redirect with the following tool
http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp
and noticed it response a 302 redirect.
Using a 302 redirect for this is not the good choice. It should be a 301 move permanantly.
See
http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/when-to-use-a-301-vs-302-redirect/
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-discussing-302-redirects/
How to change the 302 to a 301?
#1
I'm confused, why did they choose to use 302 as opposed to 301s for the url alias module?
#2
I agree the links should have 301 redirects.
After a little digging it looks like User Referral used drupal_goto to redirect the user to the correct page. According to the API docs (http://api.drupal.org/api/function/drupal_goto) we can make these redirects a 301 redirect pretty easily.
I have included a patch that makes the necessary changes.
I think this is the proper way to do the redirect. Please review and comment!
Also my referral path is set to a url that is controlled by securepages (http://drupal.org/project/securepages) This module also does a 302 redirect. I filed an issue and patch to change their redirect to a 301. http://drupal.org/node/506522
On a related note, maybe the User Referral admin page should contain a setting to set if the referral path is https or not. This would only be to help avoid 2 redirects when in use with a solution like securepages.
As is stands now the process is like so:
referral redirect -> securepages redirect ->destination
this would allow a shorter (faster?) path to the end.
referral redirect -> destination
I dont know how this affects SEO or speed but it seems cleaner.
So not a huge deal.. just a thought.