The URL Redirect Checker that traces every hop, in bulk.

What a URL redirect checker actually does

A URL redirect checker is a diagnostic tool that follows the path a link takes from the moment it's requested to the page a visitor (or a search engine crawler) actually lands on. When you check url redirect behaviour for a page, the tool sends a real HTTP request, reads the response header, and — if that header contains a redirect instruction — follows it, then repeats the process until it reaches a page that loads normally. The end result is a full picture: how many hops occurred, which HTTP status code fired at each step, and where the link truly ends up.

This matters for SEO because search engines treat different redirect types differently. A permanent redirect tells crawlers to transfer ranking signals to the new address, while a temporary one keeps the original URL in play. A redirect checker makes that distinction visible instead of leaving it hidden inside server headers that most people never look at. It's also the fastest way to catch problems a normal site visit would never reveal, like a redirect loop that only appears under certain conditions, or a chain that quietly grew from one hop to four over several years of site changes.

How to use a redirect checker effectively

The most useful way to run a check website redirect audit is right after any structural change to a site — a domain move, an HTTP to HTTPS switch, a CMS migration, or a bulk rewrite of URL slugs. Paste the affected URLs into the bulk redirect check panel above, run the trace, and compare the hop count and final destination against what you expect. If a page that should load directly is instead passing through two or three redirects, that's link equity and page speed being left on the table. A redirect tester that also detects loops is particularly valuable during migrations, since a single misconfigured rewrite rule can send a whole URL pattern into an infinite loop that's invisible in a normal browser (because browsers cap redirects too, but silently).

A practical example

Say an old blog post lived at http://example.com/blog/old-post. Over time the site moved to HTTPS, then adopted a www subdomain, then renamed the post slug for clarity. A visitor — or Googlebot — requesting the original link might now pass through three separate redirects before reaching the current page. Run that URL through this http redirect checker and you'll see each of those three hops individually, along with their status codes, instead of just the final result a browser would silently deliver. That visibility is what lets you flatten the chain into a single direct redirect, which is faster for users and cleaner for crawlers.

Whether you're auditing one link or running a bulk redirect check across an entire migrated site, the goal is the same: confirm every URL resolves the way you intend, in as few hops as possible, using the correct redirect type. This tool is built to make that confirmation immediate, accurate, and free — with live results only, never simulated data.