Redirect Checker

When to use Redirect Checker

• Auditing a site migration: After moving URLs, verify that every old URL redirects to the correct new URL via a single 301 redirect, not a chain through intermediate URLs.
• Diagnosing slow page load times: Each redirect adds at least one HTTP round trip. A chain of three redirects adds 300-900 ms of latency before the browser receives the first byte of content.
• Checking canonical URL configuration: Verify that HTTP redirects to HTTPS and www to non-www (or the reverse) are happening in a single hop without intermediate stops.
• Detecting redirect loops before publishing: A redirect loop (A redirects to B, B redirects to A) results in a browser error page and a lost user. Check new redirect rules before deploying.

How HTTP redirect chains are traced and what status codes mean

The Redirect Checker sends an HTTP HEAD request to the URL you provide and follows each redirect response, recording the full chain of URLs and their HTTP status codes. A HEAD request retrieves only the response headers - not the body - which makes the check fast and bandwidth-efficient. Each hop in the chain is recorded: the URL requested, the HTTP status code returned, the Location header value (the next URL in the chain), and the response time in milliseconds.

HTTP redirect status codes carry specific semantic meaning. A 301 (Moved Permanently) tells search engines that the destination URL is the canonical, permanent address - link equity (PageRank) transfers to the destination, though Google has confirmed a small amount is lost at each hop. A 302 (Found, also called Moved Temporarily) signals a temporary redirect; search engines continue to index the source URL and do not transfer link equity. A 307 (Temporary Redirect) is the HTTP/1.1 equivalent of 302, explicitly preserving the request method. A 308 (Permanent Redirect) is the permanent equivalent of 307. Meta refresh and JavaScript redirects are also detected where possible, though these do not carry link equity cleanly.

A redirect chain of more than two hops adds latency to every page load and degrades link equity transfer. Google's crawl budget documentation notes that crawler resources are finite - excessive chains mean fewer pages are crawled per session. The tool flags chains longer than three hops, redirect loops (where a URL appears twice in the chain), and mixed HTTP/HTTPS transitions that indicate a misconfigured SSL redirect.