Redirect Chain Checker

A chain is any URL that redirects to a second URL that itself redirects again before finally returning content — two or more hops instead of one. A single hop (like http:// forwarding to https://) is normal and healthy; a chain of three, four, or more hops is what this tool flags.

Each extra hop adds real latency for every visitor and every crawl, and search engine crawlers allocate a limited crawl budget per site — a long chain burns that budget on redirects instead of on your actual content. Google has also said it may not follow very long chains at all, meaning the final page can simply never get indexed.

A 301 or 308 (permanent) tells search engines to transfer ranking signals to the new URL and update their index. A 302, 303, or 307 (temporary) tells them the move is short-lived, so they keep the original URL indexed and typically don't pass ranking signals the same way. Using a temporary redirect for a permanent move is one of the most common causes of pages that mysteriously never re-rank after a URL change.

A loop is when a chain eventually redirects back to a URL it already visited, so it never reaches actual content. Browsers detect this and show an error ("too many redirects"), and crawlers give up the same way — the page becomes completely unreachable and un-indexable until the loop is fixed.

Up to 10. In practice a healthy site never needs more than one or two — if this tool stops at 10 without reaching a final page, something is very likely misconfigured (often a loop, which it will flag directly).