Every time you move a page, change a domain or restructure your site, you create redirects. Most developers add one and move on. But over time, redirects stack up — old redirects pointing to other redirects, pointing to other redirects — until you have chains of 4, 5 or more hops that silently damage your SEO and slow down every visitor.
The Anonymiz Redirect Checker traces the full redirect chain for any URL — every hop, every status code, every response header — so you can see exactly what is happening before it hurts your rankings.
What Is a Redirect Chain?
A redirect chain occurs when URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects to URL C, before finally reaching the destination. Each step is an extra HTTP round trip that adds latency. On a fast connection, each hop adds 50-200ms. On mobile or slow networks, each hop can add 300-500ms or more.
More importantly for SEO, Google has to follow each hop to reach the final content. While Google does follow redirect chains, PageRank dilutes slightly at each step. A direct URL passes 100% of its signals. A single redirect passes most. A chain of 4+ redirects can lose a measurable portion of PageRank by the time it reaches the final destination.
The Most Common Redirect Chain Problems
HTTP to HTTPS to WWW
The most common chain on the web. A site migrates to HTTPS but keeps old HTTP links. The HTTP URL redirects to HTTPS, which redirects to the www version. That is 2 hops minimum before reaching the content. The fix is a single redirect: HTTP directly to HTTPS www (or non-www), skipping the intermediate step.
Old domain to new domain via staging
A site migrates from olddomain.com to newdomain.com. But the old site still has its own internal redirects. Visitors hit olddomain.com → olddomain.com/page → newdomain.com/page — three hops just to see content. These often go unnoticed because traffic seems to work, just slowly.
CMS-generated redirect chains
WordPress, Shopify and other CMS platforms generate redirects automatically when you change slugs or move content. Change a URL three times and you have a three-hop chain. Most admins add a new redirect without removing the old one, and the chain grows.
Affiliate and tracking links
Marketing links often pass through multiple tracking systems before reaching the destination — your redirect, then the affiliate network, then the merchant. Checking these chains reveals unexpected third-party hops that expose user data to additional parties.
How to Use the Redirect Checker
Enter any URL — including http:// URLs, short links, affiliate links or old bookmarked URLs — and click Trace Redirects. The tool follows every HTTP redirect and displays the full chain with the status code for each hop. Click "show headers" on any hop to inspect the full response headers including Location, Cache-Control and Server.
The summary at the top shows total hops, number of redirects and the final HTTP status code. A healthy result is 0 redirects (direct) or 1 redirect with a final code of 200.
What the Status Codes Mean
- 200 OK — The final destination. No more redirects.
- 301 Moved Permanently — The content has permanently moved. PageRank passes. Browsers cache this redirect.
- 302 Found — Temporary redirect. PageRank stays with the original URL. Do not use for permanent moves.
- 307 Temporary Redirect — Like 302 but preserves the HTTP method (POST stays POST).
- 308 Permanent Redirect — Like 301 but preserves the HTTP method. Use for form submissions.
- 404 Not Found — The redirect chain ends at a broken page. This loses all PageRank.
How Many Redirects Are Too Many?
Google recommends keeping redirect chains to a maximum of 3-5 hops, but in practice anything more than 1 redirect is worth reviewing. For your most important pages — homepage, product pages, blog posts — the target should be 0 redirects (the URL is the canonical URL) or 1 redirect at most.
Run the redirect checker on your top 10 traffic URLs from Google Search Console. If any have chains of 3 or more, fixing them is one of the highest-ROI technical SEO tasks you can do this week.
Check Your Redirects Now
Use the free Redirect Checker to trace any URL instantly. No login, no install, no limit on checks. Works with any URL including http, https, short links and affiliate URLs.
