Redirect Chain Checker
Lists every redirect hop with its status code until the address settles. Long chains burn crawl budget and bleed link equity at each step.
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What does this tool look at?
Everything that decides whether Google can crawl and index your page: tags, redirects, robots, sitemaps and server responses.
- Each hop shown with its status code
- Permanent (301) versus temporary (302)
- Loops and unnecessary intermediate hops
- Total time spent in the chain
What this tool measures
When an address moves, a redirect connects the old one to the new one. A redirect that finishes in a single hop is healthy. The trouble starts when redirects stack: if http goes to https, https goes to www, and www goes to the new address, the visitor has taken three laps before arriving.
The tool requests the address you enter and lists every hop of the chain with its status code. It also spells out what the code means: 301 permanent, 302 temporary, 307 and 308 the method-preserving equivalents. That distinction matters because a permanent redirect passes link value and a temporary one does not.
Alongside server-side redirects it also looks for a meta refresh embedded in the page. The old technique still works, but it is a weak signal for a search engine and it leaves the visitor waiting.
How to use it
- 1
Enter the address you want to trace
An old URL, a campaign link or a shortened link. The chain is followed all the way to the end.
- 2
Look at the hop count
Zero or one hop is healthy, two is a warning, three or more is a fault. Every hop costs time and value.
- 3
Read the status codes
A permanent move should show 301 or 308. With a 302, the search engine keeps the old address in the index.
- 4
Collapse the chain to one hop
Skip the intermediate steps and redirect straight to the final address; updating the target in your server rule is enough.
When to use it
- After a migration, to confirm old addresses land on the right target.
- To measure how many hops your ad links take, since every hop is a visible delay on mobile.
- To find out why a page keeps appearing in search under its old address.
- To see where a shortened link (bit.ly and friends) goes without clicking it.
Reading the result
More than two hops
Crawl budget is wasted and every hop adds visible delay on a mobile connection. Flatten the chain.
A 302 in use
A temporary redirect. If the page moved for good, change it to 301; otherwise the old address stays in the index.
Final status is not 200
The chain ends in an error or in another redirect. A redirect that lands on a 404 is worse than no redirect.
Meta refresh found
The page loads first and then redirects itself. A server-side 301 is both faster and clearer.
The chain ends on http
The redirect happened but the protocol was never upgraded. Make sure the final address is https.
Questions about the Redirect Chain Checker
301 is a permanent move: the search engine drops the old address from the index and passes the accumulated link value to the new one. 302 is temporary: the old address stays indexed and no value moves. If a page moved for good, use 301.
Google says it follows up to five hops and then stops crawling. The practical target is one. Two is acceptable; three or more is debt that needs paying down.
Google has said for years that a 301 loses nothing. Even so, every hop spends crawl budget, and an error anywhere in the chain stops the transfer completely. Keep chains short because they are fragile, not because of the loss.
Where possible, yes: each old address should go to its own new equivalent. Sending everything to the homepage is the easiest and the most damaging option; Google treats it as a soft 404 and the value the old page built up disappears.
Use it alongside these
The other tools in the same category. Run them together and you see the whole picture.
The tool found the problem. Now for the fix
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