307 and 308 Redirects: The Lesser-Known Redirects Explained
Most people know the 301 and the 302. The 307 and 308 redirects are the lesser-known pair, and they matter more than you might think for forms, shops and payments.
Ask anyone who looks after a website about redirects and they will almost certainly mention the 301. A few will remember the 302. Hardly anyone mentions the 307 or the 308, yet both have been quietly doing their job on the web for years, and you may well be using them without knowing.
They are the lesser-known redirects, and they are worth a few minutes of your time, because they solve a problem the better-known pair cannot.
A quick refresher
A redirect is a sign on the road that says “this page has moved, go here instead”. Every redirect carries a number that tells browsers and search engines what kind of move it is.
- A 301 says the page has moved permanently.
- A 302 says the move is temporary.
For most website changes, such as a new page address, a switch to https or a change of domain name, a 301 is the right choice, and it is the one we use most.
So where do the 307 and 308 come in?
The 307 and 308 are the strict twins of the 302 and 301:
- A 307 is a temporary redirect, like a 302.
- A 308 is a permanent redirect, like a 301.
The difference is in what happens to information that visitors send. When a browser follows an old-style 301 or 302 after someone has submitted a form, it is allowed to quietly turn the submission into an ordinary page request and drop what was sent. That was a quirk of the early web that stuck. The 307 arrived with HTTP/1.1 in 1999, and the 308 followed in 2015, with one rule: whatever the browser was doing, it must do the same thing again at the new address.
Why that matters
For a page that people only read, it makes no difference at all. It matters when something is being sent to your website rather than read from it. Imagine a contact form, a booking form or a checkout that sends its information to an address that has since been redirected, for example when a website moves from http to https or from one domain to another. With an old-style redirect, the browser may carry the visitor to the new address without the information they typed, and the form appears not to work. With a 307 or 308, the information goes with them.
That is why the stricter pair matter most for forms, online shops and payment pages, and for the behind-the-scenes connections that websites use to talk to each other, such as the ones that pass an order from a shop to another system. If you run a shop, our ecommerce and online payments work takes care of details like this.
Where you might meet them without knowing
- In your hosting or security settings. Many hosting control panels and services, including Cloudflare, let you choose which type of redirect to use. Some website platforms and frameworks use a 308 by default when you ask for a permanent redirect.
- In your browser. If you open your browser’s developer tools and look at the network activity for an http address, you may see a “307 Internal Redirect”. That is not your website. Your browser is upgrading the address to https by itself, because it already knows your website should be secure.
What do search engines make of them?
Google treats a 308 in the same way as a 301, and a 307 in the same way as a 302. What matters to Google and other search engines is whether the move is permanent or temporary, not which number you used. A permanent redirect tells them to show the new address in search results, and a temporary one tells them to keep the old address because it is coming back. That is why a temporary redirect left in place for a permanent move can keep the wrong address showing in search for longer than you would like.
Should you switch everything to 307 or 308?
No. For ordinary pages, a 301 does exactly what you need, it works everywhere, and there is no reason to change a redirect that already works. Think about a 307 or 308 when:
- forms, shopping baskets or payment pages are involved and you need the information to arrive intact;
- your website talks to other systems that send information to it; or
- your developer or hosting uses a 308 already, in which case you can leave it alone.
The more important thing is to pick between permanent and temporary correctly, and to make sure each old address goes to the right new page rather than to the home page.
Moving your website or domain name?
Redirects are the most important part of moving a website without losing the visitors and search rankings you have already built. Our guide to protecting your Google rankings when you redesign or move your website covers the whole process, and our website redesign and migration service plans and sets up the redirects for you. We can also look after your domain names, and check how a move shows up in Google Search Console as part of our SEO services.
Want to know more?
We have written a plain-English guide to all four types, with a checklist for choosing between them, how to test a redirect, and the common mistakes to avoid: 301, 302, 307 and 308 redirects explained.
If you are not sure whether the redirects on your own website are the right ones, get in touch and we will be happy to take a look.
