What this tool does

The Redirect Chain Visualizer sends a bounded public request and follows each HTTP redirect manually. It records the response at every hop instead of allowing the network client to hide the intermediate chain.

For each hop, it reports:

Sequence number
Requested URL
HTTP status
Raw Location header
Resolved next URL
Response time
Protocol change
Hostname change
Path change
Query-string change
Permanent or temporary redirect classification
Loop, chain, downgrade, and destination warnings

The visualizer follows at most ten HTTP redirect hops. That limit matches the general redirect depth Google documents for its crawlers, although individual Google products and inspection tools can behave differently.

Result summary labels

Direct response

The submitted URL returned a non-redirect response without an HTTP redirect hop.

Clean single redirect

The source redirects directly to the final destination in one HTTP hop.

Redirect chain

The URL passes through multiple HTTP redirects before reaching the final response. Replace avoidable intermediate hops with a direct redirect where practical.

Redirect loop

A URL repeated within the trace. The chain cannot reach a stable final destination until the loop is repaired.

Broken destination

The chain ends at an error, blocked request, malformed Location value, or response that could not be fetched.

Hop limit exceeded

The trace reached the ten-hop safety limit before a final response. Long chains are fragile for users and crawlers and should be reduced.

Indeterminate

The chain could not be classified reliably within the tool's bounded fetch and security limits.

How to read the chain

Permanent redirects

301 and 308 communicate that the resource has moved permanently. Search systems can use these responses as strong canonicalization signals toward the destination.

Use permanent redirects when the move should remain in place.

Temporary redirects

302, 303, and 307 generally communicate a temporary move. They can be correct for temporary routing, login flows, experiments, or short-lived maintenance.

Do not replace every temporary redirect mechanically. First decide whether the source URL should remain the long-term representative.

Relative Location values

A response can declare a relative target:

Location: /new-page/

The tool resolves it against the current URL and displays both the raw value and the resulting absolute URL.

Host and protocol changes

The visualizer flags transitions such as:

http://example.com/
→ https://example.com/
→ https://www.example.com/
→ https://www.example.com/final/

A normalization sequence may work, but it adds hops. Prefer one direct redirect from each known alternate to the final canonical URL.

An HTTPS-to-HTTP downgrade receives a high-priority warning.

Query changes

The report shows when parameters are added, removed, or replaced.

Review whether the chain drops required campaign or application parameters, preserves tracking parameters indefinitely, creates duplicate destinations, repeats parameters at every hop, or redirects clean URLs into session or preview URLs.

Final response

The final response matters as much as the redirect path.

A chain is not healthy merely because every intermediate hop is a valid 301. The destination should normally be stable, public, and appropriate for the original resource.

Warnings appear when the destination returns 401 or 403, 404 or 410, 429, 5xx, a non-HTML content type when HTML was expected, or another redirect that exceeds the hop limit.

Non-HTTP redirects

The tool detects simple HTTP Refresh headers and zero-delay HTML meta refresh declarations when they appear in the bounded response sample. It reports them separately.

It does not execute JavaScript. A redirect created only through window.location, framework code, or user interaction may not appear in this trace.

Server-side HTTP redirects are normally easier for crawlers and users to process than script-only redirects.

Export controls

Copy summary, Download CSV, and Download JSON operate only on the current browser-visible report. The server does not retain the report to generate a later download.

CSV cells beginning with spreadsheet formula characters are prefixed safely before download.

What this tool cannot tell you

The Redirect Chain Visualizer cannot determine:

Whether Google has indexed the source or destination
Which URL Google selected as canonical
Whether a browser-only JavaScript redirect runs successfully
Whether logged-in users receive another chain
Whether a redirect varies by geography, cookie, device, or experimentation platform
Whether an external destination is trustworthy
Whether a temporary redirect should become permanent without knowing the business intent

Safe use and privacy

The tool rejects credentials, local and private-network addresses, cloud metadata destinations, unsupported ports, oversized responses, and unsafe redirect targets. Every redirect target is revalidated before it is fetched.

The tool does not impersonate Googlebot. It identifies itself as Rank Builder's redirect inspector so results may differ from crawler-specific or personalized routing.

DNS prevalidation reduces but cannot eliminate the risk inherent in arbitrary public fetching. Cloudflare platform protections remain in force, and strict response, time, hop, and byte limits bound each trace.

Redirect Chain Visualizer

Trace one public URL