Enter a URL to follow its full redirect chain. See every hop with its status code, the final destination, loops, 301 vs 302, meta refresh and JavaScript redirects, and whether the http, https, www and non-www versions all end in the same place. Free, no account needed.
A healthy redirect is one permanent hop from the old URL straight to a live page. Everything in the report measures how far a URL is from that.
Every URL in order, with the status code it answered and how it sent visitors on: a server redirect (301, 302, 303, 307 or 308), a meta refresh, a Refresh header, or a JavaScript redirect. The last entry is the page visitors finally land on.
How many redirects there are, the final URL and its status, the total time the hops took, whether the redirects are permanent, temporary or a mix, and whether the chain upgrades to HTTPS, stays on it, or drops back to HTTP.
The same path on http and https, with and without www. On a well-configured site all four end on one final URL in as few hops as possible. If they end in different places, search engines can find duplicate versions of your pages.
Each problem with what to do about it: loops, chains longer than one hop, temporary redirects used for permanent moves, mixed 301 and 302 hops, HTTPS downgrades, browser-side redirects, and final pages that return errors.
Paste the old address, a short link or any page URL. If you leave off http:// or https://, we start from https://.
Redirects are followed one at a time, up to 10 hops, the same limit search engines use. Each status code, Location header and response time is recorded.
When a hop returns a page instead of a redirect status, we look for a meta refresh, a Refresh header or a simple JavaScript location change, and follow it as its own hop.
The http, https, www and non-www versions of the same path are traced too, so you can see whether they all reach one final URL.
The TaskGlaze site audit finds redirect chains, loops and links that point at redirects across every page of your site. See the site audit.
Redirects decide where visitors and ranking signals end up when a URL changes. These rules keep both from leaking away.
A permanent redirect tells search engines to index the new URL and pass the old one's signals to it. Use 301 for ordinary moves; 308 does the same while keeping the request method, which matters only for forms and APIs.
Temporary redirects say the old URL is coming back, so search engines may keep it indexed. They are right for short campaigns, A/B tests and maintenance, and wrong for migrations.
Every hop adds a round trip for visitors and a step for crawlers. When you move a page that already has redirects pointing at it, update those old rules to point at the new final URL.
Choose https and either www or non-www, then redirect the other three versions to it in a single hop. This is the most common source of two-hop chains.
Redirects are a safety net for links you don't control. Links in your own menus, content and sitemap should point at final URLs directly, so neither visitors nor crawlers ever hit a redirect.
Send a removed page to its nearest replacement. Redirecting everything to the home page is usually treated as a soft 404, and the old page's signals are lost.
Browser-side redirects are slower, depend on the page loading, and are weaker signals for search engines. Use them only where you can't change the server configuration.
Leave permanent redirects for at least a year after a move, and longer for URLs with external links. Removing them early turns every old link into a 404.
http → https → www → new path is four hops for one page. Each migration added one rule on top of the last. Flatten them so every old URL goes straight to the final one.
Many platforms default to 302. If the move is permanent, change it to 301 so search engines index the new URL.
Two rules that send URLs back and forth, often an http-to-https rule fighting a CDN or plugin setting. Browsers show a "too many redirects" error and crawlers give up.
A rule that sends a secure URL to an insecure one, usually a hard-coded http:// in a redirect target. Browsers may warn visitors, and the HTTPS version stops being the one that ranks.
A redirect whose target was later removed ends on a 404, wasting every link that still points at the old address.
A domain move that sends every page to the new home page throws away deep links. Map old paths to their new equivalents.
One version redirects permanently and another temporarily, or two versions end on different pages. Test all four, as this tool does.
These files should answer 200 at the root of the canonical host. Redirecting them works for some crawlers but not all.
Status codes, chains, loops and how search engines treat them.
A redirect checker follows a URL the way a browser or crawler would and shows each redirect on the way, with its status code, until it reaches the final page. It tells you where a link really goes and whether the path there is clean.
A chain is two or more redirects in a row, such as http://example.com → https://example.com → https://www.example.com. Each hop slows the page down for visitors and adds a step for crawlers. The fix is to point the first URL straight at the final one.
A 301 is permanent: search engines index the new URL and pass the old one's signals to it. A 302 is temporary: search engines may keep the old URL indexed because you've said it will come back. Use 301 (or 308) for moves you don't plan to undo.
They are the temporary and permanent equivalents of 302 and 301 that also keep the request method, so a form POST stays a POST. For ordinary page moves, 301 and 308 behave the same for search engines, as do 302 and 307.
Googlebot follows up to about 10 hops in a chain, then gives up. Long before that, each extra hop slows the page down, so aim for a single hop.
A permanent redirect passes ranking signals to the target, but chains, temporary redirects and redirects to unrelated pages all risk losing some of that value. One permanent hop to a closely matching page is the safe pattern.
A loop is when redirects send a URL back to an address already in the chain, so it never reaches a page. Browsers show a "too many redirects" error. The usual cause is two rules, often in different places such as the server and a plugin, undoing each other.
Yes. When a page answers normally instead of with a redirect status, we look for a meta refresh tag, a Refresh header or a simple JavaScript location change, and show it as its own hop. Redirects built by complex scripts may not be detected, because the page's scripts aren't run.
Otherwise search engines can find up to four copies of every page. Redirecting the other three versions to your chosen one, in one permanent hop, consolidates signals and avoids duplicate content.
Some sites block automated checks with bot protection and answer 403 or a challenge page. The redirects before that point are still real. The final page may load normally in a browser, and search engine crawlers may get a different answer.
Three per tool per day without an account, or fifteen per tool per day when you are signed in to your TaskGlaze account. Each free tool has its own count.
We check every link against public lists of phishing and scam sites before following it, and refuse ones that look unsafe. A refused link doesn't use one of your daily checks. The pages are fetched by our server, never by your browser.
More free checks from TaskGlaze, with the same daily allowance for each tool.
The TaskGlaze site audit traces redirects, loops and links to redirected pages across your whole site.