Redirect Chain Checker — Help & Documentation
Learn how to trace redirect chains, detect loops, and understand the crawl budget impact of unnecessary hops.
Features
Follows up to 10 redirect hops and stops safely on loops
Shows the HTTP status code at every hop (301, 302, 307, 308, etc.)
Displays the response headers for each step so you can inspect Location, Cache-Control, and other values
Measures total round-trip time in milliseconds across the full chain
Detects redirect loops and flags them with a clear error status
Opens any hop URL in a new tab so you can inspect it directly
Color-coded status chips: green for 2xx, amber for 3xx, red for 4xx/5xx
How to Use
Enter a URL
Paste any full URL — including the protocol (https://) — into the input field. This is the starting point of the chain.
Click Check
Press the Check button or hit Enter. The tool sends the URL to the SECrawl backend, which follows all redirects server-side.
Read the summary
The summary shows the total number of redirects, the total time in milliseconds, and an overall status chip (No Redirects, Acceptable, Too Many Redirects, or Redirect Loop Detected).
Inspect the chain
Each hop is shown in a vertical stepper with its status code, URL, and response headers. The final destination is marked with a "Final Destination" chip and bold text.
Understanding Results
| Status | Meaning | Action |
|---|---|---|
No Redirects | The URL resolves directly with a 2xx response. | Nothing to fix. |
Acceptable (1–2 hops) | The URL redirects once or twice before reaching the final destination. | Acceptable but aim to consolidate to a single hop where possible. |
Too Many Redirects (3+) | Three or more redirects were followed. Googlebot may stop following and not index the final page. | Update links to point directly to the final URL, or fix the server config to reduce hops. |
Redirect Loop | A URL in the chain redirects back to a URL already visited, causing an infinite loop. | Investigate the server-side redirect rules immediately — this URL is uncrawlable. |
Best Practices
Keep chains to one hop whenever possible. If URL A redirects to B and B redirects to C, update A to redirect directly to C.
After a site migration, audit all internal links and update them to point to the new final URLs rather than relying on redirects.
Use 301 redirects for permanent moves (e.g., HTTP to HTTPS, non-www to www, old slugs to new slugs) so link equity is consolidated.
Never redirect a URL to itself or create circular redirect rules — check your .htaccess, Nginx config, or CMS settings if a loop is detected.
Use SECrawl's full site crawl to find all redirect chains and broken redirects across your entire domain at once, rather than checking URLs one at a time.