BudURL University: 307 Redirects

We’ve had some recent questions as to why BudURL uses 307 redirects instead of 301 redirects. So, here’s our answer.

WARNING: This is about to get technical & ridiculously “nerdy”

Since BudURL shortens URLs, it essentially redirects URLS. In other words, your internet server translates “http://budurl.com/l2y4″ to mean “redirect to http://www.budurl.com”.

In HTTP coding, there are four different ways to redirect a URL; 301-Permanent Redirect, 302-Object Moved, 304-Not Modified and 307-Temporary Redirect.

A lot of other URL shorteners use 301-Permanent Redirect (hence all the confusion over BudURL using 307-Temporary Redirect). In the most technical terms, a 301-Permanent Redirect,

“…tells the Web client that the location for the requested resource has permanently changed. The new location is specified in the Location HTTP header. This is primarily useful for Web clients that keep record of HTTP URL links. Upon receiving this status code, the Web client can update the stored URL with the new location.”

In other words, a 301 redirect means that the page has permanently moved.

Google suggests using a 301 when,

“You’ve moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.

People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways – for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com – it’s a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL. You can also use Webmaster Tools to set your preferred domain.

You’re merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.”

So, for example, when you are building a site and have decided to permanently change the URL, you would use a 301 redirect. Since a 301 is a permanent redirect, if you want to change the URL again there would have to be a second redirect. In other words, if I have www.oldwebsite.com and use a 301 to permanentaly redirect it to www.newwebsite.com. Later on, when I have www.evennewerwebsite.com, I would have to still redirect www.oldwebsite.com to www.newwebsite.com and then redirect again to www.evennewerwebsite.com. A chain of redirects can become problematic for search engines to pick-up.

However, BudURL gives you the option of using a 307-Temporary Redirect. For one obvious reason, users are shortening their URLs, not permanently replacing them. If you are deleting your primary URL or permanently replacing it, you should use a 301-Permanent Redirect and not simply use a BudURL. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about then don’t delete anything!)

Once again, in the most technical terms, a 307-Temporary Redirect,

“…is used to prevent a Web browser from losing data when the browser issues an HTTP POST request. Normally, when a Web browser issues a POST request and then receives a 302-Object Moved redirect message from the Web server, the browser issues a GET request for the new location and loses the data in the POST request. With a 307 redirect, the browser reissues the POST request with the original data to the new location.”

Kind of confusing.

A 307-Temporary Redirect tells the server to redirect to another page, just like a 301-Permanent Redirect. But, it also tells the requester that the original location still exists.

Therefore, since BudURL offers a 307-Temporary Redirect option, it helps eliminate any caches you could experience in the future. Aka, we’re not creating any permanent hurdles that could trip you up later.

So, our preference is to use a 307, but if 301 is how you roll, we’ve got you covered.