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Colin McDermott for Search Candy

Posted on • Originally published at searchcandy.uk

What is a 308 Permanent Redirect?

What is a 308 Permanent Redirect HTTP response?

A 308 Permanent Redirect is a server HTTP response status code used for permanent redirection.

A 308 HTTP response is near identical to a 301, and has been confirmed to be treated as such by Google.

The only notable difference between a 301 and 308 HTTP response is that a 308 does not allow changing the request method from POST to GET.

Example 308 Permanent Redirect Response

HTTP/1.1 308 Permanent Redirect
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Location: https://www.example.com/
Content-Length: 356

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
<head>
<title>Permanent Redirect</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>
The document has been moved to <a href="https://www.example.com/">https://www.example.com</a>
</p>
</body>
</html>

RFC

RFC7538, April 2015

Is a 308 response good for SEO?

A 308 HTTP response has been confirmed by Google to be treated as identical to a 301 by its bots/algorithms.

However a 308 response is still a newer and more unusual status code, so it is unknown how all search engines/bots around the world will treat it.

Non-Standard Usage of 308 Status Code

It should be noted that some sites may use a 308 status code in a non-standard way, such as in Google Drive - where a 308 Resume Incomplete status is used to indicate when an incomplete upload has stalled.

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