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Redirect Chain Checker

The Redirect Chain Checker follows a URL one hop at a time, up to 10 hops, and lists every step with its status code. It checks for loops, more than 1 redirect, temporary 302 or 307 redirects, plain http hops, and whether the chain ends on a 200. The headline gives the number of hops to the final page.

Updated

How to read the redirect result

The table lists each URL in order with the status it returned. The last row is where the chain ends, and a healthy chain ends on a 200.

No redirects in the headline means the URL answered directly. That is a pass as long as the final status is 200.

To trace up to 20 URLs at once, tick the box under the field and paste one URL per line. The table then shows each URL's redirects, final status and where it ends.

301, 302, 307 and 308 redirects

A redirect sends a visitor or crawler from one URL to another, and the status code says whether the move is permanent. Search engines pass a page's signals to the new URL on a permanent redirect, and keep the old URL indexed on a temporary one.

  • 301 Moved Permanently: the page has moved for good. Use it for changed URLs and merged pages.
  • 302 Found: a temporary move. The old URL stays indexed.
  • 307 Temporary Redirect: like a 302, but the request method can't change.
  • 308 Permanent Redirect: like a 301, but the request method can't change. Many modern frameworks use it by default, and search engines treat it as permanent.

What each check means

No loop fails when the chain returns to a URL it already visited. One hop or none warns when there are 2 or more redirects, which add a request for crawlers and a delay for visitors.

Permanent redirects warns on any 302 or 307, which are temporary. Use a 301 or 308 for a page that has moved for good. Ends on a 200 fails when the last response is an error or there was no response. https throughout warns when any URL in the chain, including the one you entered, starts with http://.

Redirects and AI crawlers

Some bot protection and CDN settings treat crawlers differently from browsers, so the redirect path you see in a browser isn't always what a crawler gets. A crawler might hit an extra hop, a challenge page or a block.

Switch the checker to Googlebot, Bingbot or OAI-SearchBot to rerun the trace with that crawler's user agent. The trace only changes the user agent, so a CDN that verifies crawlers by IP can still treat the real crawler differently. If the results differ from a browser trace, check your CDN and firewall rules, and the AI crawler checker for what each AI crawler is allowed to fetch.

Fixing the common problems

  1. Point the first URL straight at the final destination so there is a single hop.
  2. Update internal links, sitemaps and canonical tags to the final URL.
  3. Change 302 and 307 redirects to 301 when the move is permanent.
  4. Break a loop by finding the two rules that send the URL back and forth, which are often a www rule and a trailing slash rule.
  5. Redirect http to https in one step, straight to the final address.

Common questions

The redirect chain checker passes 0 or 1 redirects and warns from 2. Aim for a single hop from any old URL to its final address.
A 301 says the page has moved permanently. A 302 says the move is temporary. Use a 301 when the old address is not coming back.
The redirect chain checker follows up to 10 redirects and then stops. If you hit that limit, shorten the chain and run the check again.

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