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Free check · Redirects

Redirect checker

Follow a URL through every redirect, hop by hop, with the status code of each response. Check that the http, https, www and non-www versions of a site reach one address in a single permanent redirect, and find chains, loops and meta refresh redirects.

Follows the URL you enter through every redirect, probes the http, https, www and non-www versions of the host, then loads the home page and the pages they link to, up to 12 pages, and up to 12 redirect and canonical targets they name. Free, no account needed.

What the checker reads

The checker requests the address you enter and follows its redirects one hop at a time, recording the status code and Location header of every response, for up to eleven requests. A response counts as a redirect only when it carries a 3xx status and a Location header.

It then requests the home page on every other combination of http and https, with and without www, that resolves in DNS, along with the same path for one of the site's inner pages. Finally it loads the home page and the pages they link to, twelve in all, and requests the redirect and canonical targets those pages name. The results show:

  • the address you entered, hop by hop, with the status of each response and where it ended;
  • whether each http, https, www and non-www version reaches the preferred address in one permanent redirect that keeps the path;
  • chains of two or more redirects, and loops or chains that never end;
  • temporary redirects (302, 303 and 307), meta refresh redirects and JavaScript redirects;
  • HTTPS URLs that redirect to HTTP, and certificate errors on any version of the host.

Why redirects matter to search engines

A redirect is more than a forwarding address. Google lists it among the ways to indicate a canonical URL, describing it as “A strong signal that the target of the redirect should become canonical.”[G-CANON] Bing's advice for duplicate hosts is just as direct: “Use 301 redirects to consolidate variants into a single preferred URL.”[B-DUP]

That is why the variant check matters. When http://example.com, https://example.com and https://www.example.comall answer with a page, the same content lives at several addresses, and the redirect is what tells search engines which one you prefer. Duplicates of this kind are a housekeeping problem rather than a penalty, and moving to HTTPS is no ranking trick either. Both rows come from the scanner's myth guard:

From the myth guard, which lists every claim the scanner refuses to score and why.
ClaimVerdictWhat the source says
Duplicate content triggers a penaltyContradictedOrdinary duplication is "not a violation of Google's spam policies" [G-CANONICALIZATION]
HTTPS gives a direct ranking boostNot establishedA "very lightweight signal" in 2014; the current page experience documentation says aspects beyond Core Web Vitals "don't directly help" ranking [G-HTTPS-2014][G-PAGE-EXP]

Permanent or temporary

For a move that will last, Google recommends “a permanent server-side redirect whenever possible”[G-REDIRECTS]. A temporary redirect says something else. Google's redirects guide says its indexing pipeline “doesn't use the redirect as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical”[G-REDIRECTS], and its crawling documentation calls a 302 “a weak signal that the redirect target should be processed”[G-HTTP].

The checker cannot know whether you mean a move to be temporary, so it lists 302, 303 and 307 responses as notes rather than issues. Host and protocol variants are the exception. They exist only to consolidate, so a temporary redirect on one of them is reported as an issue to fix with a 301 or 308.

Common redirect problems

Redirect chains

Each extra hop is one more request before the visitor, or the crawler, reaches the page. Chains usually come from rules layered over time, such as one that adds https in front of another that adds www. Google's site move guidance is explicit:

“While Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops in a "chain" of multiple redirects (for example, Page 1 > Page 2 > Page 3), we advise redirecting to the final destination directly.”

[G-SITEMOVE] Avoid chaining redirects

The fix is to point every source straight at the final URL, and to update old rules whenever a new redirect changes their destination.

Loops and chains that never end

“By default, Google's crawlers follow up to 10 redirect hops.”[G-HTTP] A chain that returns to a URL it already requested, or that still redirects after ten hops, never reaches a page at all. The checker reports both as failures and prints the chain so you can see where it turns back.

Meta refresh and JavaScript redirects

A meta http-equiv="refresh" tag with a URL sends the visitor on after the page has loaded. Google's advice on the tag is short: “We recommend using a server-side 301 redirect instead.”[G-META-TAGS] For scripts that set location, the redirects guide gives the order of preference: “Only use JavaScript redirects if you can't do server-side or meta refresh redirects.”[G-REDIRECTS] The checker spots only top-level assignments in inline scripts, so it reports JavaScript redirects as notes.

HTTPS that falls back to HTTP

Google “strongly recommends using HTTPS for your site to protect your users' security and privacy.”[G-HTTPS-REPORT] Its canonicalization guide adds that “Google prefers HTTPS pages over equivalent HTTP pages as canonical”[G-CANON], and warns that bad certificates and redirects from HTTPS to HTTP can “cause Google to prefer HTTP very strongly.”[G-CANON] The checker validates the certificate of every https version it requests and flags any hop that goes from https to http.

Where the redirect lands

The destination matters as much as the route. “Google only indexes pages that are served with an HTTP 200 (success) status code.”[G-TECH] The checker shows the final status of every chain, and the noindex checker shows whether the page at the end can be indexed. Internal links that still point at a redirecting address are worth updating too, because Google advises: “When linking within your site, link to the canonical URL rather than a duplicate URL.”[G-CANON] The canonical tag checker lists those links.

What this checker cannot tell you

It sees what the server sends to an honest, cookie-less request from the scanner's own user agent. Redirects that depend on location, language, device or login are invisible to it, and so is any rule that treats search crawlers differently from visitors; the full audit lists that as a manual check. Old addresses that no page links to any more, such as URLs from a previous version of the site, are outside its crawl: enter them one at a time to trace them.

The rules this checker runs

Each is a rule from the full ruleset, run by the same evaluator, with the same reason templates and citations. A rule's page lists its fail conditions and the passages it rests on. Informational rules (C4) never produce an issue.

  • SEO-URL-01Host and protocol variants redirect to the preferred originC2 Recommended· w4
  • SEO-REDIR-07Redirect chains resolveC1 Mechanism· w8
  • SEO-REDIR-03Redirects go straight to the final destinationC2 Recommended· w4
  • SEO-HTTP-07HTTPS without certificate errors or downgradesC2 Recommended· w4
  • SEO-META-06No meta refresh redirectsC2 Recommended· w4
  • SEO-HTTP-01Intended URLs return HTTP 200C1 Mechanism· w8
  • SEO-REDIR-01Temporary redirects in useC4 Informational· w0
  • SEO-REDIR-06Client-side redirectsC4 Informational· w0

Primary sources

The documentation this page and its rules rest on, with the date each page showed and the date its wording was last checked. The source registry lists every source the scanner may cite.

This page checks one thing. The full audit runs all 70 scored rules.

It covers 16 categories on up to 200 pages, orders the fixes by the strength of the evidence behind them and prints its score with the arithmetic. Every finding cites the primary source it rests on. No account is needed.

Run the full 70-rule audit