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Free redirect checker

Trace exactly what happens when a URL is requested: every hop, every status code, and verdicts on chains, loops and protocol downgrades.

What this tool checks

The checker requests your URL without auto-following redirects, records the status code, reads the Location header, and repeats — up to ten hops, the same limit Googlebot uses. You get the full chain as a list of URL + status pairs, plus verdicts: more than two redirects is flagged as a long chain, revisiting a URL is flagged as a loop, a plain-HTTP hop after an HTTPS one is flagged as a security downgrade, and 302/307 hops earn a note about temporary-vs-permanent semantics. An HTTP→HTTPS upgrade at the front of the chain is marked as expected and healthy.

Why redirect chains matter

Redirects accumulate silently. A site migrates to HTTPS (hop one), later moves to a new domain (hop two), then restructures its URLs (hop three) — and suddenly every old backlink drags visitors through three round-trips before content can even start loading. On mobile networks each hop typically costs 100-500 ms, which lands directly on your Largest Contentful Paint. Crawlers suffer too: deep chains consume crawl budget, and links that pass through several hops consolidate signals more slowly than links that resolve in one. The worst case, a loop, takes the page fully offline — browsers give up with ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS and crawlers drop the URL.

How to fix what the trace shows

Long chain: collapse it — make the first URL redirect directly to the final destination and update the intermediate rules to do the same. Then update your own internal links, sitemap and canonical tags to reference the final URL so most visitors never redirect at all. Loop: find the two rules bouncing between each other (server config vs CDN edge rules is the classic pairing) and make one of them the single source of truth. 302 on a permanent move: change it to a 301 (or 308 if the request method must be preserved) so search engines consolidate signals. HTTPS downgrade: hunt down the legacy rule that still targets http:// — commonly an old vanity-domain redirect — and point it at the HTTPS destination. After any fix, re-trace here to confirm the chain is one hop or none.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a 301 and a 302 redirect?

A 301 is permanent: search engines transfer the old URL’s ranking signals to the new one and eventually replace it in the index. A 302 is temporary: the old URL stays indexed. Using 302 for a permanent move delays consolidation — one of the most common migration mistakes.

How many redirects are too many?

Googlebot follows up to 10 hops before giving up, but each hop adds a full network round-trip for users — often 100-500 ms on mobile. Keep chains to one hop; this tool warns at more than two.

Do redirects lose PageRank?

Google has said 301s and 302s no longer lose PageRank directly. Long chains still hurt: latency worsens Core Web Vitals, and crawlers may abandon deep chains, leaving destination pages under-crawled. Point every internal link straight at the final URL.

What causes redirect loops?

Usually two rules fighting: the server forces www while the CDN forces non-www, or an https rule bounces to a URL that another rule bounces back. The trace shows the exact URLs in the cycle, which tells you which two rules to reconcile.

Why does the checker flag an HTTPS-to-HTTP downgrade?

A chain hop from https:// to http:// sends visitors to an unencrypted page — browsers mark it not secure, referrer data is stripped, and any cookie on the domain becomes interceptable. Downgrades are almost always a misconfigured legacy rule.

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