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SEO Madmanby Adam Hafez
Free tool

Redirect chain analyzer: check hop count, loops and mixed codes

Paste a redirect chain you collected yourself and check it against Google's guidance on chain length, loops, mixed 301/302 codes and protocol drift.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded, logged or stored.

This tool does not fetch any URL itself. Nothing you paste here is sent anywhere; it is parsed in your browser only. Collect the real chain first, for example from your browser's dev tools Network tab, curl -IL, or a redirect-checking service.

    Key takeaways

    • Google documents that Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops, but advises keeping a redirect chain to no more than 3 and fewer than 5 hops.
    • A redirect chain that revisits the same URL twice is a loop that no crawler or browser will finish following.
    • Mixing 301 and 302 codes within one chain makes the intended permanence of the move ambiguous, since Google treats the two codes as distinct signals.
    • A chain that drops from https to http, or switches between the www and bare host, adds an avoidable extra hop each time it happens.
    • This tool analyzes a chain you paste in rather than fetching URLs live, since cross-origin restrictions make client-side redirect-following unreliable in a browser.

    What it takes

    • A pasted redirect chain, one hop per line as "URL -> status code"

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    How to use it

    1. 1Collect the real chain firstThis tool has no server to fetch through, so open your browser's dev tools Network tab, reload the page with "Disable cache" on, and read each request's status and its Location header, or run curl -IL against the starting URL from a terminal.
    2. 2Paste each hop as "URL -> status"One line per hop, in order, ending with the final page's own status. The prefilled example shows a mixed 301/301/302 chain ending at a 200 so every check has something to flag.
    3. 3Read the chain-length verdictThe tool counts only the 3xx hops and compares that count against Google's documented guidance, warning once the chain passes 3 hops and flagging it as a hard problem at 5 or more.
    4. 4Review the flagged issuesBelow the verdict, the tool lists any loop, mixed 301/302 usage, https-to-http downgrade, or www and non-www inconsistency it found, each with the line numbers involved.

    A redirect chain is easy to create by accident: a site move, then an https migration, then a www change, each adding one more hop on top of the last. None of that is visible from clicking a link, only from the sequence of status codes underneath it.

    Why this tool does not fetch URLs itself

    A browser will not let a page running on seomadman.com read the response headers of a request to a different origin; that restriction exists for good reason and this tool does not try to work around it. So rather than following redirects live and reporting an unreliable partial result, it analyzes a chain you already collected: your browser’s dev tools Network tab, curl -IL, or a redirect-checking service all show the real hop-by-hop status codes and destinations. Paste that in, and the analysis runs entirely in your browser with nothing sent anywhere.

    Google’s documented guidance on chain length

    Google’s own site-move documentation states that Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops in a chain of multiple redirects, but adds a clear recommendation on top of that ceiling: redirect to the final destination directly where possible, and if that is not possible, keep the number of redirects in the chain low, ideally no more than 3 and fewer than 5. This tool applies that exact threshold: a chain at 3 hops or fewer passes, one above 3 gets a warning, and one at 5 or more is flagged as a hard problem, since it is both past Google’s stated ideal and closer to the point where crawling and real user load time both suffer.

    301 versus 302, and why mixing them is a problem

    Google’s documentation on redirects draws a firm line between the two most common codes: 301 (and 308) are permanent redirects, meant for a page or site that has moved for good, while 302 (and 303, 307) are temporary, meant for a page that will return to its original location. A permanent redirect passes the intended signal that the move should stick; a temporary one keeps the source URL showing in search results rather than the target. A chain that mixes both codes sends a mixed signal about which behavior is actually intended, so this tool flags that combination as worth a second look, separate from Google’s own explicit chain-length guidance.

    Use this tool after you have already gathered a chain from a real source, not as a substitute for gathering one: it tells you what the sequence of hops you found actually implies, not whether the destination page itself exists or responds correctly.

    Sources

    1. 1.Redirecting an entire site or section of a site - Google Search CentralPrimary
    2. 2.301 redirects and Google Search - Google Search Central
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