Abusive 302 Redirect

Abusive 302 redirect refers to the manipulative use of HTTP 302 (temporary) redirections for ranking manipulation purposes. Historically, '302 hijacking' was a technique where site A redirected via 302 to site B, which could cause Google to display site A's URL in its results while showing site B's content, effectively 'stealing' a competitor's ranking. While Google has largely corrected this issue, other abusive uses persist: using 302s instead of 301s to avoid transferring PageRank during URL changes, chains of 302 redirects to mask the final destination, and conditional 302 redirects (redirect cloaking) that redirect users but not bots. Best practices are simple: use 301 for permanent redirects and 302 only for genuinely temporary redirects (maintenance, A/B tests, temporary geographic redirects). Google now treats long-standing 302s as 301s, but deliberately abusive use remains penalizable.