Redirect Checker
Trace a URL's redirect chain hop by hop, spot loops, meta refresh and JS redirects, and compare the http, https and www variants.
Trace a URL's redirects
Follows up to five hops, reads the final page for meta refresh and JavaScript redirects, and tests the http/https and www variants.
What the Redirect Checker does
A redirect is a server telling a browser "not here, go there". One permanent redirect is normal and healthy, for example from http to https or from an old article URL to its replacement. Problems start when redirects stack: the http page sends you to https, which sends you to www, which sends you to the trailing-slash version, which sends you to the new path. Every hop is a round trip for the visitor and a chance for a crawler to stop following. Loops, temporary codes used for permanent moves, and chains ending on an error page are all common after a migration.
This checker requests the URL and follows the chain hop by hop, recording the status code and address at each step up to five hops. It then reads the final page for the two kinds of redirect that happen in the browser rather than on the server: a meta refresh tag and a JavaScript location change. Finally it requests the four host variants, http and https with and without www, and reports whether all of them arrive at the same final URL, which is what a clean canonical host setup looks like.
Use it after launching a new site, after changing a URL structure, when Search Console reports "Page with redirect", or when a page feels slow to open and you suspect it bounces through several addresses first.
Step by step
- 01Paste any URL, old or new. A bare domain like example.com works too.
- 02Click Trace. The chain, the final page checks and the four host variants take a few seconds.
- 03Read the hop list: more than one 3xx row in a row means a chain to shorten.
- 04Look at the variants table; every row should end at the same https URL.
- 05Fix the redirect rules on the server, then trace again to confirm one hop and consistent variants.
Common questions
301 and 308 are permanent: search engines move the ranking signals to the new URL and eventually stop crawling the old one. 302 and 307 are temporary: the old URL keeps its place in the index. 307 and 308 additionally promise that the request method is kept, which matters for forms, not for normal page links. Use 301 for moved pages.
Google follows up to ten hops, but each one adds latency and a little uncertainty, and chains of three or more often hide an older redirect that could point straight to the destination. One hop is ideal; two is acceptable when one is the https upgrade. This tool follows five before reporting a loop or chain that is too long.
Visitors and other sites link to all four forms of a domain. If https://example.com and https://www.example.com both answer with 200, you have two copies of every page competing with each other. Pick one host, redirect the other three forms to it, and every link counts for the same page.
Google does follow them, treating an instant meta refresh roughly like a permanent redirect and a delayed one like a temporary redirect, but they are slower for visitors and only work after the page has downloaded and, for JavaScript, rendered. A server-side 301 is faster and understood by every crawler, so use it wherever you control the server.
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