Whenever you load a webpage, the web server sends a status code back to your browser. 404 is a file not found error, 200 is an OK acknowledgement that the page is available, and a 301 is a permanent redirect ... meaning that your web server is saying that the page was moved to a different URL and forwards the web browser to that new URL.
For example, if I used to have a page www.site.com/page.html but then I renamed it to www.site.com/newpage.html , I don't want everyone who is still going to the old URL to get a 404 error. So I set up a 301 redirect so each time someone tries to access page.html, their web browser is automatically redirected to newpage.html. When search engines encounter a 301 redirect, they know to stop indexing the old url and to pass its pagerank to the new url.
cscgal
The Queen of DaniWeb
19,421 posts since Feb 2002
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We remove all 301 redirection to all of our sites to prevent hurting our sites.
mokmok69
Junior Poster in Training
65 posts since Apr 2009
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