Will a 302 redirect maintain the referer string?

Question

I need to redirect the user from one page to another, but I need to maintain the original referer string. So, for example, if they start out on http://www.othersite.com/pageA.jsp, click a link that takes them to http://www.example.com/pageB.jsp, which then executes a 302 redirect to http://www.example.com/pageC.jsp, I need the referer string to contain http://www.othersite.com/pageA.jsp

Is this the normal behavior for a 302 redirect? Or would my original referer get dropped, in favor of http://www.example.com/pageB.jsp? That would not be desirable.

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I'm working in JSP, and I'm using response.sendRedirect() to execute the 302 redirect.

I should mention that I did an experiment with this, and it seems to have kept the original referer string (http://www.othersite.com/pageA.jsp) but I just wanted to make sure this was the normal default behavior, and not something weird on my end.

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Although I'm currently using a 302 redirect, I could probably use a 301 redirect instead. Do you know if the behavior for 301 redirects is any more reliable?

Answer 1

I don't know about the 302, but I tested the 301 on some browsers today, here the results:

SCENARIO: user clicks link on domainX that points to domainA. domainA does a 301 redirect to domainB.

• IE8 referer when landing on domainB is: domainX (even when using InPrivate browsing and even when user opens link in new tab)
• Safari4 referer when landing on domainB is: domainX (even when user opens link in new tab)
• FF3.6.10 referer when landing on domainB is: domainX (even when user opens link in new tab)
• Chrome5 referer when landing on domainB is: domainX (unless user opens links in new tab)
• Chrome26 referer when landing on domainB is: domainX (even when the user opens links in new tab)