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Redirect Chain Checker
Follow 301/302 chains and spot loops.
How it works
Follow every hop in a redirect chain
Enter any URL and our server requests it, follows up to 8 redirects and records each hop: status code, Location header and how long it took. You see whether http:// lands on https://, whether www and non-www are consolidated with a single 301, whether temporary 302s are leaking link equity, and whether the chain loops or wastes hops. Each extra hop costs visitors time and dilutes SEO signals, so the aim is one permanent redirect at most.
Results appear here after you click Trace redirects.
How this works
- 1
Request from our server
We fetch the URL exactly as a browser would, without following redirects automatically, so each hop is visible.
- 2
Follow each Location
Up to 8 hops are followed, recording status, target and timing, and we detect when a URL repeats.
- 3
Judge the chain
Hop count, redirect types, HTTPS handling and host changes are compared against what search engines and browsers prefer.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a redirect chain and why is it bad?
- A chain is two or more redirects in sequence before the final page loads, for example http → https → www. Each hop adds a round trip for the visitor and Google passes slightly less ranking signal through each one. Aim for a single 301 from every legacy URL straight to the final one.
- 301 vs 302: which should I use?
- 301 (and 308) mean permanent: search engines transfer rankings to the new URL and eventually drop the old one. 302, 303 and 307 mean temporary: the old URL stays indexed. Use 301 for moved pages, domain changes and http-to-https; use 302 only for genuinely short-lived redirects such as A/B tests or maintenance.
- How do I fix ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS?
- Something redirects A to B and B back to A. The usual culprit is HTTPS forced in two places: a proxy such as Cloudflare in Flexible mode talks to your origin over http, so the origin's force-https rule redirects again forever. Set the proxy to Full (strict) SSL or disable one of the two rules.
- Should www redirect to non-www or the other way round?
- Either works; what matters is that one is canonical and the other 301s to it in a single hop. Pick the form your marketing already uses, make sure HTTPS works on both, and keep the choice consistent in your sitemap and canonical tags.
- Does a redirect from my old domain to my new one hurt SEO?
- No, as long as each old URL redirects to its equivalent new URL with a 301 (not everything to the homepage) and the old domain stays registered. Keep the old domain and its redirects live for at least a year so search engines and backlinks catch up.
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