Redirects

Where does this URL actually end up?

Every redirect costs a round trip, and chains of three or four are surprisingly common after a site migration. This tool follows each hop individually and shows you the status code, the destination and the time each one adds.

We follow each hop separately, up to eight, and report all of them.

Each hop is requested individually with redirect-following disabled, so the chain is observed rather than summarised. Response times are measured server-side from our infrastructure and are indicative of relative cost, not of what a visitor in your market would experience.

The guide behind this tool Redirects: 301 vs 302, Chains, and the Migration That Loses Your Rankings When to use each status code, why redirect chains cost more in speed than in link equity, and the one migration mistake that reliably destroys organic traffic. Read the guide · 5 min read →

What this tool checks

Each hop requested separately, with redirect-following disabled, so you see the chain as it really exists.

  • Full hop-by-hop chain

    Every intermediate URL, in order, with the status code each one returned.

  • 301 versus 302

    Permanent moves marked temporary keep the ranking on the old URL, sometimes for months.

  • Chain length

    How many round trips a visitor pays for before anything renders. Each hop can cost 200–400ms on mobile.

  • HTTPS and HSTS

    Whether HTTP upgrades correctly, and whether HSTS removes that hop for returning visitors.

  • Time per hop

    Time to first byte for each request in the chain, so you can see which one is slow.

  • Final status

    Whether the chain actually ends at a working page.

How to read your result

Zero or one hop is fine. One is normal — it is usually http→https or non-www→www.

Three or more is worth flattening. Not because search engines cannot follow them, but because each is a full round trip before your visitor sees anything. Fix it by pointing the first URL directly at the final destination instead of at the next rule in sequence.

A 302 on a permanent move is the quiet one. Google usually works it out eventually, but "eventually" can mean months of the old URL holding the position while the new page sits unindexed.

If HSTS is missing and you redirect HTTP to HTTPS, adding it removes that redirect entirely for every returning visitor. One header, one round trip saved on every page load.

If the chain ends at a 404, this URL is broken for anyone who follows an old link to it. That is usually a migration that mapped some URLs and missed others.

What redirects cost, and when they are worth it

301 versus 302

A 301 is permanent. Search engines transfer ranking signals to the destination and eventually replace the old URL in their index. Browsers cache it aggressively — often indefinitely, which is why a mistakenly published 301 is genuinely painful to undo.

A 302 is temporary. Signals stay with the original URL and the destination is not indexed in its place. This is correct for A/B tests, temporary maintenance pages, and language redirection based on Accept-Language — cases where the destination genuinely depends on the request.

The mistake that costs real traffic is using 302 for a permanent move. Google will usually work it out eventually, but "eventually" can mean months of the wrong URL ranking.

Chains

A chain is a redirect to a redirect. They accumulate quietly: http:// to https://, then non-www to www, then old path to new path, then trailing-slash normalisation. Four hops, each a full round trip, before the browser sees any content.

Google follows up to about ten hops before giving up, so a short chain is not usually a ranking catastrophe. The real cost is speed — on a mobile connection each hop can add 200–400ms to the point where anything renders, which lands directly on Largest Contentful Paint.

The fix is to flatten: point the original URL directly at the final destination rather than at the next redirect in line.

Loops

A redirect loop makes the page completely unreachable. The usual causes are a trailing-slash rule fighting a canonical rule, or an HTTPS redirect at the application layer fighting one at the CDN. Both are invisible until someone hits the exact URL that triggers them.

The migration rule

When a site moves, every old URL that had traffic or links needs a direct 301 to its closest equivalent. Not to the homepage — redirecting everything to the homepage is treated as a soft 404 and transfers essentially nothing. A real URL map is tedious to build and it is the difference between keeping your rankings and starting over.

Frequently asked questions

How many redirects is too many?

One is ideal. Two is fine. Three or more is worth flattening — not because search engines cannot follow them, but because each hop is a round trip a mobile visitor pays for before seeing anything. Google gives up somewhere around ten.

Do redirects lose link equity?

Google has said 301 redirects pass full PageRank since 2016, so the old '15% loss per hop' rule no longer applies. That said, long chains still risk the redirect being treated as unreliable, and the speed cost is unambiguous. Flatten them because they are slow, not because you fear a decay tax.

Should I redirect HTTP to HTTPS?

Yes, with a 301, and add HSTS afterwards. HSTS tells the browser to go straight to HTTPS on every subsequent visit, eliminating the redirect entirely for returning visitors. That removes a full round trip from every page load.

What about redirecting an old site to the homepage?

Do not. Google treats a mass redirect of unrelated URLs to the homepage as a soft 404 and passes almost nothing. Map each URL to its closest equivalent, and let genuinely orphaned URLs return 410 Gone so they drop out of the index cleanly.

Other free tools

SEO & Speed Audit

Real Core Web Vitals from Google's API, plus live on-page checks against your actual HTML.

Tell us what you are trying to grow.

One team. Three offices. Twenty-six languages. Send us the problem and you get a senior answer — not a sales script.

Get a proposal → Message us now

A written proposal within one business day, in your language.