Redirect Checker & HTTP Headers

What a redirect checker shows you

A redirect checker requests a URL the way a browser or Googlebot would, but instead of silently following each redirect it stops and records every hop: the address, the status code, where the Location header points next, how long the server took and what software answered. That turns "the site feels slow" or "Google indexed the wrong version" into a list of specific rules you can fix.

Most sites need exactly one redirect: from whichever version a visitor types to the one canonical address. Anything beyond that is either wasted time or a sign that two rules are fighting each other.

How to check redirects and fix what you find

1. Enter the bare domain first. Typing example.com starts on http://, which is how many visitors and old links arrive. Leave "Check all variants" on to test all four versions at once.
2. Read the hops top to bottom. Green codes (301, 308, 200) are fine. Amber 302 or 307 codes mean "temporary", so Google may keep the old URL in its index. Red codes are errors.
3. Look for chains. A common pattern is http://www to https://www to https://. That is two hops where one would do, usually because the HTTPS rule and the www rule were added at different times.
4. Switch the User-Agent to Googlebot. If the chain changes, a plugin or CDN is treating crawlers differently from people, which Google can treat as cloaking.
5. Copy the suggested .htaccess rules and test again. Fix the redirect first, then add the missing headers.

301, 302, 307 and 308 in one minute

• 301 Moved Permanently: the default for HTTPS, www changes and renamed pages. Ranking signals move to the new URL.
• 308 Permanent Redirect: the same, but the browser must keep the request method, which matters for forms and APIs.
• 302 Found and 307 Temporary Redirect: for genuinely short moves, such as a maintenance page or a seasonal promotion.
• Meta refresh: a redirect inside the HTML. Google follows instant ones, but they are slower and break the back button. Replace them with a server rule.

One rule for all four versions

On Apache and Hostinger, this single rule sends http, https, www and non-www straight to https://example.com in one hop. Swap in your own domain, or build a version with caching and compression in the .htaccess generator:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ https://example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Before you force HTTPS, confirm the certificate covers both the www and non-www names with the SSL checker. Redirecting to a name the certificate does not cover swaps one problem for a scarier one.

Security headers worth adding

The same response that ends your redirect chain carries security headers, so this tool grades six of them. Strict-Transport-Security stops browsers from ever trying plain http again. X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy and Permissions-Policy are one line each and almost never break anything. Content-Security-Policy is the most powerful and the easiest to get wrong, so start with the small starter policy this tool suggests, then tighten it. Redirects and headers both sit on the website launch checklist, and they are worth checking again after every host or CDN change.

Frequently asked questions