Redirect & Canonical Checker

Every extra hop slows the visitor down and wastes crawl budget. Google follows chains, but link value passes through fewer hops more cleanly. Point old URLs straight at the final destination.

A 301 says the move is permanent, so search engines pass the old page's value to the new one and update their index. A 302 says it is temporary, so they may keep the old URL indexed. If a move is permanent, use 301.

A redirect sends visitors to a page, then that page tells Google to index a different URL instead. That mixed signal often means the wrong page ends up in search results. The landing page should normally point its canonical at itself.

The chain finishes on an unencrypted http URL. Browsers warn on those and Google prefers https, so the final step should be https.

Up to 25 URLs per check for visitors and 100 when you are signed in, with 10 checks every five minutes. Each URL is a real request, sometimes several.

No. This checks exactly the URLs you paste. To follow links across a whole site, use the Site Crawl tool.

A single 301 passes it on, but Google follows only a limited number of hops, so long chains are a risk. Our post on domain migrations covers what Google says happens to backlinks when a site moves, and the SSL checker confirms the new address serves a valid certificate.