Every time a URL redirects to another URL, your visitors lose a few milliseconds and your PageRank loses a little equity. Most website owners have no idea how many redirects are happening across their site. The Anonymiz Redirect Checker traces every hop in a redirect chain instantly — showing each 301, 302 or 307 response code, the headers, and the final destination URL.
What Is a Redirect Chain?
A redirect chain occurs when URL A redirects to URL B, which then redirects to URL C. Instead of a single clean redirect, the browser has to make multiple HTTP requests before reaching the final page. Each hop adds latency — typically 100 to 300 milliseconds — and each hop dilutes the PageRank passing from the original URL.
A single redirect is acceptable and often necessary. Two or more redirects in a chain is a problem worth fixing.
Why Redirect Chains Hurt SEO
Google has confirmed that redirect chains slow down crawling and reduce the amount of PageRank passed to the destination URL. When Googlebot encounters a chain of redirects, it may stop following after a certain number of hops, leaving the final page undiscovered. Core Web Vitals scores also suffer because each redirect adds to the Time to First Byte (TTFB) metric.
Common causes of redirect chains include: migrating from HTTP to HTTPS while also migrating from non-www to www (creating two hops instead of one), updating URLs multiple times without removing old redirects, and using third-party redirect services on top of server-level redirects.
301 vs 302 vs 307 Redirects
The Redirect Checker identifies the type of each redirect in the chain:
- 301 Permanent — the resource has permanently moved. Search engines update their index and pass PageRank to the new URL. Use this for all permanent moves.
- 302 Found (Temporary) — the resource is temporarily at a different location. Search engines keep the original URL in their index. Use this for temporary campaigns or A/B tests.
- 307 Temporary Redirect — same as 302 but strictly preserves the HTTP method. The browser must use the same method (GET, POST) for the redirect request.
- 308 Permanent Redirect — same as 301 but strictly preserves the HTTP method. Useful when redirecting POST requests permanently.
How to Use the Redirect Checker
Enter any URL — including http:// URLs — and click Trace Redirects. The tool makes HEAD requests server-side so results are not affected by your browser cache or location. Each hop is shown with its status code, full URL and a toggleable headers panel so you can inspect response headers at every step.
Try entering your homepage URL with http:// to see whether it resolves cleanly in one hop to your HTTPS canonical URL or whether it passes through multiple intermediate redirects.
How to Fix a Redirect Chain
The fix is straightforward once you know what the chain looks like. Update the original redirect to point directly to the final destination URL, skipping all intermediate steps. For example, if http://example.com redirects to http://www.example.com which then redirects to https://www.example.com, update the first redirect to go directly to https://www.example.com. One hop instead of two.
In Apache .htaccess, ensure your HTTP to HTTPS and non-www to www rewrites are combined into a single rule. In Nginx, combine conditions in one server block. In Cloudflare, use a single Page Rule or Redirect Rule covering both conditions.
Check Your Full Site
The Redirect Checker works on any publicly accessible URL. Check your most important pages — homepage, main product pages, blog posts — and fix any chains you find. For large sites, work through your top pages by organic traffic first, as those are where redirect chains cause the most damage to your SEO rankings.
