A redirect is a way to send both users and search engines to a different URL from the one they originally requested. The two most commonly used redirects are 301 (Permanent Redirect) and 302 (Temporary Redirect).

Redirects are also used when a website URL name has changed, or a page no longer exists so the website user needs to be redirected to a different page, or the country suffix at the end of a domain name has changed; multiple potential misspellings or abbreviations of a domain name would have redirects to send the user to the correct domain, etc.