Redirect Checker: trace the full URL redirect chain

A redirect is an HTTP response that tells the browser "the resource you asked for lives somewhere else — go fetch this URL instead". The response carries a 3xx status code and a Location: header with the destination URL. A redirect chain is what happens when the destination itself redirects again, and so on. This redirect checker calls the public redirectcheck.org API which traces every hop server-side and returns the full chain as JSON — something browsers can't do directly because cross-origin responses hide intermediate redirects.

301, 302, 303, 307, 308 — what each one means

301 Moved Permanently — the resource has a new permanent URL. Search engines transfer ranking signals to the new URL. Use this for site migrations, URL restructuring and old-domain → new-domain moves.

302 Found — temporary redirect. Browsers cache the original URL; search engines keep the old URL indexed. Use only for short-term experiments, A/B tests and maintenance pages.

303 See Other — sent after a POST so the browser does a GET on the redirect target (the "post-redirect-get" pattern). Common after form submissions.

307 Temporary Redirect — same as 302 but preserves the HTTP method and body. A POST followed by a 307 stays a POST to the new URL.

308 Permanent Redirect — same as 301 but preserves the method and body. The modern successor to 301 for POST-aware permanent redirects.

Why redirect chains hurt SEO

Every hop in a chain costs three things: extra latency for the user, a portion of Googlebot's per-host crawl budget, and a tiny dilution of the ranking signal each hop passes through. Google states it follows up to 10 redirects per URL before treating it as an error. A chain of more than 2 hops is a red flag; 3+ hops should be flattened so the original URL points directly at the final destination.

Redirect loops

A loop is a chain where one URL eventually points back to a URL that already appeared earlier in the chain. Browsers cut the loop with ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS; users see a blank failed page. This tool detects loops by tracking visited URLs and flags them with a red warning.

Mixed-protocol chains

A chain that bounces between http:// and https:// leaks cookies, can be man-in-the-middled, and triggers browser security warnings. Common pattern: http://example.com → https://example.com → https://www.example.com. Always redirect protocol AND host in one hop.

HTTP vs HTML vs JS redirects

This checker traces HTTP redirects (Location header). It cannot follow HTML meta refresh (<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=...">) or JavaScript redirects (window.location = …) because those happen client-side, after the page loads. Google's own guidance is to prefer real 301s for any redirect you want indexed.

Why the User-Agent matters

Some sites serve different redirects to bots than to humans — a practice called cloaking that violates Google's webmaster guidelines. Other sites legitimately redirect mobile UAs to m.example.com. Switching the User-Agent in this tool reveals both — useful for SEO audits and for catching accidental cloaking after a CDN config change.

Privacy

The URLs you check are sent to the redirectcheck.org API; this page itself stores nothing. The API is free, requires no signup, and serves browser-side requests via CORS.