Redirect Chain Checker, Trace Every Hop and Status Code
Enter any URL and follow its full redirect path hop by hop, with status codes, permanent vs temporary flags, meta refresh warnings, and a clear verdict on whether the chain needs fixing.
301 vs 302 vs 307/308, Choosing the Right Redirect
Every redirect status code sends search engines a different instruction. A 301 says the move is permanent: Google transfers ranking signals to the destination, updates its index, and eventually drops the old URL. A 302 says the move is temporary: Google keeps the original URL in mind and may continue indexing it, which is exactly what you want for A/B tests or short-lived promotions and exactly what you do not want for a site migration. Using a 302 where a 301 belongs is one of the most common technical SEO mistakes, and it can leave ranking signals stranded on a URL that no longer serves content.
The 307 and 308 codes are the strict HTTP/1.1 equivalents: 307 is a temporary redirect and 308 is a permanent one, and both guarantee the request method is preserved, so a POST stays a POST. For SEO purposes Google treats 308 like 301 and 307 like 302, so the same permanence logic applies. Meta refresh redirects, which happen inside the HTML rather than in the HTTP response, are the weakest option of all: they are slower for users, ambiguous for crawlers, and should always be replaced with a proper server-side 301.
Why Redirect Chains Waste Crawl Budget and Dilute Link Equity
A redirect chain forces every visitor, and every crawler, to make multiple round trips before reaching real content. Each hop adds latency that hurts Core Web Vitals, and each hop consumes a crawl request that could have fetched a real page instead. On large sites, thousands of chained URLs can meaningfully reduce how much fresh content Googlebot discovers per crawl cycle. Googlebot also gives up after 10 hops, so long chains can leave pages entirely unreachable, and chains that mix 301s with 302s send contradictory permanence signals that slow index consolidation.
Chains also erode link equity. While Google says PageRank passes through 301s, every additional hop is another opportunity for signal loss, and chains that pass through temporary redirects or meta refreshes are the leakiest of all. The fix is simple: point every redirect directly at the final destination URL with a single 301. After a migration, audit your top linked and top trafficked URLs first, update internal links so they point straight at final URLs with no redirect at all, and re-run this checker until every important path resolves in one hop.