Redirect checker

Enter a URL. We follow every redirect ourselves, up to 10 hops, and show each status code, destination and response time.

How it works

Browsers follow redirects silently, so you only see where you land. We follow them one at a time instead: request the URL, read the status code and Location header, and repeat, up to 10 hops. Each hop shows its status, where it points and how long the server took to answer. Every hop is validated before we follow it, so a redirect can’t send the checker to a private address.

What we flag

Chains. http://example.com → https://example.com → https://www.example.com is two hops where one rule would do. Common after a site moves hosts twice.
Temporary redirects on permanent moves. A 302 tells search engines the old URL may come back, so they may keep it indexed. HTTPS upgrades, www rules and renamed pages should be 301 or 308.
Loops. A rule that sends the URL back to one it already visited. Browsers show an error page.
Downgrades. Any hop from https back to http.
A bad ending. A chain that ends in a 404 or 5xx loses the page completely.
Slow hops. Over a second to answer a redirect usually means an app server is doing work a CDN rule could do instantly.

Fixing a chain

Find the final URL (the last hop above).
Change the first rule to point straight at it. On most hosts that means one rule that matches both http:// and the non-canonical host.
Update internal links, canonicals and your sitemap to use the final URL, so nothing hits the redirect.
Run the checker again on the old URL and on the http:// and www variants.

Then check the sitemap lists only final URLs with the sitemap checker, and that the final page’s canonical points to itself with the meta tag checker.

Limits

We follow HTTP redirects only. Meta refresh tags and JavaScript redirects happen in the browser and aren’t followed. Some sites answer bots differently from browsers, so a firewall may show us a block page or a challenge instead.

Questions

301 or 308, 302 or 307: which should I use?

For a permanent move use 301 or 308; for a temporary one use 302 or 307. Google treats 301 and 308 the same way, as do 302 and 307. The difference is that 307 and 308 keep the request method, which matters for forms and APIs, not for normal page links.

How many redirects are too many?

Googlebot follows up to 10 hops, but every hop adds a round trip for visitors. Aim for one: the old URL points straight at the final one. We flag any chain of two or more.

Do redirects lose ranking signals?

Google has said 301, 302 and 307 redirects don't lose PageRank. The practical risks are elsewhere: a temporary redirect may keep the old URL in the index, long chains slow crawling, and a loop or a broken final hop loses the page completely.

Why does the checker start at http:// when I type a bare domain?

Because that's the version old links, printed material and typed-in addresses often hit. Starting there shows whether http:// upgrades to https:// in one hop. Enter a full https:// URL to trace from that instead.

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