308 Permanent Redirect

Status

308 Permanent Redirect

What is a 308 Permanent Redirect HTTP response?

A 308 Permanent Redirect is a server HTTP response status code used (quite rarely) 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.

HTTP Response Status Codes List

200 OK, 301 Moved Permanently, 302 Found, 303 See Other, 307 Temporary Redirect, 308 Permanent Redirect, 403 Forbidden, 404 Not Found, 410 Gone, 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons, 500 Internal Server Error