Redirect checker: trace every hop and read the headers that matter for SEO

What the redirect checker shows

A healthy URL answers with 200 directly, or with a single permanent redirect (301 or 308) to its final HTTPS address. This tool requests each hop separately, so you see every status code, Location header and response time, and it stops at loops or after ten hops. For the final URL it lists SEO-relevant headers in plain English: X-Robots-Tag, canonical Link headers, Cache-Control, HSTS, compression and the server or CDN.

How to use it

1. Enter the URL you want to trace. Old URLs from a migration, links from other sites and http:// versions are the most revealing.
2. Choose who makes the request: a browser, Googlebot (smartphone), GPTBot or our honest ABSEO checker.
3. Leave Compare all four user agents on to spot firewalls that block bots, or pages that serve crawlers something different.
4. Fix red items first, then share the report link with whoever manages your server or CDN.

What each finding means

• Redirect chain: two or more hops before the final page. Each hop adds a round trip for users and crawlers. Point the original URL and your internal links straight at the destination.
• Temporary redirect used: 302, 303 and 307 say the move is temporary, so search engines may keep the old URL indexed. Use 301, or 308 to preserve the request method.
• HTTP → HTTPS: the http:// version should 301 to https:// in one hop. If it serves a 200 page, two copies of your site exist.
• www canonicalisation: pick www or the bare domain and redirect the other. If both return 200, links and signals get split.
• Canonical URL: the final page should usually declare itself canonical. A canonical pointing elsewhere tells Google to index that other URL.
• X-Robots-Tag and meta refresh: a noindex header hides a page even when the HTML looks fine; meta refresh redirects are slower and less clear than server redirects.

Spotting bot blocks and cloaking

The comparison table requests the page as a browser, Googlebot, GPTBot and our checker and highlights differences in status, final URL, size and title. A 403 or 503 only for GPTBot usually means a CDN or firewall rule (Cloudflare’s “Block AI bots” setting, for example) is stopping AI crawlers, even if robots.txt allows them. Our request uses the bot’s user agent but not its IP address, so strict bot-verification may block us while letting the real crawler through: confirm in your server logs. Serving search engines different content from users is cloaking and breaks Google’s spam policies.

Frequently asked questions

Planning a migration? Redirect mapping is where most migrations lose traffic. List the old URLs that still earn links with the backlink checker so none of them end in a 404, run the free SEO audit on key pages, then see my technical SEO services or book a call.