Crawlie
Home Free tools Site audit Blog About Contact
Run free audit
February 20, 2026

# What Is Redirect Checker? A Practical Guide to 301 Redirect Chains

Every extra hop in a redirect chain adds latency and dilutes link equity — Google has said it follows chains, but a 3+ hop chain is still a red flag worth fixing regardless of any ranking impact.

Redirect Checker exists to solve one specific, recurring problem: 301 redirect chains is easy to get wrong by hand, tedious to check manually across a whole site, and quick to fix once you can actually see it clearly. That's the gap Redirect Checker fills.

In practice, this usually comes up in one of two situations — you're setting things up correctly from the start on a new page or site, or you're auditing something that already exists and trying to find what's silently broken. Both are worth doing regularly, not just once.

A few things worth keeping in mind:
- Point old URLs directly at the final destination — if A redirects to B which redirects to C, fix A to go straight to C.
- Use 301 (permanent) for URLs that have moved for good, and 302 (temporary) only for genuinely short-term changes like A/B tests.
- Audit redirects after every site migration or URL restructuring — this is when chains and loops get introduced, almost always by accident.

It's also worth knowing what commonly goes wrong here. Creating a redirect loop (A → B → A) — some browsers catch this gracefully, others just show an error page. And avoiding these is usually less about effort and more about knowing to check in the first place.

This connects to a few other things worth getting right at the same time — see Keyword Density Checker and Image URL Checker for the related pieces of the same technical foundation.

If you want to check this on your own site right now, Redirect Checker runs directly in your browser, free, with no account required.

Try Redirect Checker yourself

Everything in this guide runs directly in your browser — no signup, no install.

Open Redirect Checker →
More on 301 redirect chains
The 301 Redirect Chains Checklist: What to Verify Before You Publish
A short, practical checklist for 301 redirect chains — the things worth checking every time, not just the first time.
Redirect Checker vs. Doing It by Hand: Is It Worth Switching?
A practical look at what Redirect Checker actually saves you over doing 301 redirect chains manually, and when manual still makes sense.
301 Redirect Chains FAQ: Questions People Actually Ask
Straight answers to the questions that come up most often about 301 redirect chains.
Audits & reports▸
Full SEO audit Competitor comparison
Technical SEO▸
Bulk URL indexability checker Robots.txt generator Sitemap generator Schema generator Redirect checker Broken link checker Backlink checker Image URL checker Internal link suggestion tool Keyword cannibalization checker Search intent cluster tool eCommerce keyword research tool Programmatic SEO page generator
Product & e-commerce feeds▸
Multi-channel feed generator Google Merchant feed generator Facebook product feed generator Pinterest product feed generator Google product category finder Competitor product research Merchant feed validator GTIN / EAN / UPC validator Product title optimizer SEO product description generator Slug generator Keyword density
Content & AI search▸
AI crawler &amp; llms.txt checker Readability counter Blog topic generator Google Discover headline generator AI Overview optimizer GEO checker Featured snippet optimizer Topical coverage calculator Meta tag generator
Sharing & distribution▸
SERP preview Open Graph preview UTM builder WhatsApp link generator RSS feed generator
No tools match your search.