Redirect checker: what to look for in every hop
A useful redirect check reads the status code of each hop, compares your four host versions and catches headers that block indexing.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom, Editorial team··3 min read
A redirect checker requests a URL, records every hop until the final page answers, and shows the status code of each step. The one we recommend for SEO work is seogeoaeo.ai's Redirects, Headers and Host Checker, because it also compares your host versions and reads the response headers in the same run, for 10 credits.
Most redirect problems are not broken pages. They are pages that work for visitors but send search engines through extra steps, the wrong status code, or a header that quietly says "do not index". A good check catches all three.
What a redirect checker should report
| Item | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Every hop and its status code | Shows whether the chain is one step or four |
| Final URL | Confirms visitors and crawlers land where you meant |
| Permanent or temporary | Decides which URL search engines show |
| Host versions | Shows whether http, https, www and bare hosts all end at one URL |
| Response headers | Catches noindex or canonical headers you cannot see in the HTML |
A plain status checker stops at the first two.
Reading the chain
Start with the hop count. Google's crawlers follow up to 10 redirect hops by default, so a chain of three still gets crawled. That limit is a ceiling, not a target. Each hop adds a round trip for visitors and makes the crawler do more work for the same page. The fix is almost always the same: point the old URL straight at the final one.
Then check the codes. Google treats 301 and 308 as permanent and 302 and 307 as temporary. A permanent redirect tells Google to show the new URL in results. A temporary one tells it to keep showing the old URL. If a page moved for good and the chain uses 302, search results keep the address you are trying to retire.
Last, look at the final URL itself. A chain that ends on a 404, on a login page or on the home page instead of the matching new page is a redirect that technically works and still loses the visit.
Host versions are the quiet duplicate
Every site can be reached four ways: http with www, http without it, https with www and https without it. If more than one of those loads a page on its own, search engines see duplicate copies of your whole site. The checker requests all four and tells you whether they end at one URL. If they do not, it names the server rule to change, which is faster than reading your web server config line by line.
Headers you never see in the browser
Response headers travel with the page but do not show on it. Two matter most for search. An X-Robots-Tag header can carry noindex, which removes a page from Google even when the HTML looks clean. A Link header can carry a canonical URL that points somewhere else. Both are easy to set by accident in a CDN or framework config and hard to spot without a header check.
Running it
- Open the redirect and header checker and enter one public URL.
- Read the hop list, the host comparison and the header findings.
- Apply the server rule it suggests, deploy, and run the same URL again to confirm.
The same tool runs from an AI agent over MCP or the REST API, so you can check redirects from your editor after a deploy.
What it leaves out: JavaScript and meta-refresh redirects beyond the first document, DNS changes and a full security audit. If you need hundreds of URLs at once, the separate bulk status checker on seogeoaeo.ai returns status and redirect target for a pasted list, without the hop-by-hop header view.
FAQ
How many redirects are too many? Google follows up to 10 hops, but aim for one. Every extra hop slows the visit and the crawl.
Does a redirect checker see JavaScript redirects? Server redirects, yes. This one does not follow JavaScript or meta-refresh redirects beyond the first document, so test those in a browser.
Is curl enough? curl -I -L prints the headers of each hop, which works for one URL. It does not compare host versions or explain what to change.