A 301 tells clients that a redirect is permanent; a 302 says the destination is temporary. Both can send a visitor to the same page, but caches, browsers, crawlers and intermediaries may treat later destination changes differently.
Plan before publishing
Choose 302 while a campaign destination, experiment, device route or recovery page may change. Reserve 301 for a stable mapping whose future edits should be exceptional, because a client can reuse a cached permanent redirect without requesting the short link again.
- Use 302 for editable campaigns and routing.
- Use 301 only for a deliberately permanent mapping.
- Document the chosen status before publishing at scale.
Build and test the workflow
Suppose druto.link/summer initially points to /offers/june and later changes to /offers/july. With a 302, new requests normally reach the short-link service and receive the current destination. With a cached 301, some clients can continue using June.
Worked example
Test with a clean browser profile, command-line headers and at least one real mobile device. Verify the response status, Location header, final query string and behavior after changing the destination. Do not rely only on what appears in the address bar.
Measure the right outcome
Short-link analytics count requests that reach the redirect service. A cached redirect can reduce later requests, so redirect totals and destination sessions can diverge even when both systems work correctly.
Troubleshooting checklist
- Old destination persists: clear caches and test a new client.
- Parameters disappear: inspect the Location header.
- Analytics drop after 301: check whether clients bypass the redirect.
Product limits and responsible use
No status code makes an unsafe destination trustworthy or guarantees how every crawler caches it. DrutoLink supports managed redirect behavior, but changing a widely cached 301 cannot force every previous client to forget it.