# Redirect Checker > A redirect checker follows a URL through every hop and shows the status code and destination of each one. It surfaces the chains, loops and temporary redirects that slow the page, waste crawl budget and leave the wrong URL indexed. Source: https://rankcert.com/tools/redirect-checker Free, no signup. Updated: 2026-08-29 ## How to use it 1. Enter the starting URL. 2. We follow up to ten hops, recording the status code and destination of each. 3. Collapse any chain longer than one hop by pointing the first URL straight at the last. ## Questions ### 301 or 302? 301 and 308 are permanent and pass link signals. 302 and 307 are temporary and tell search engines to keep indexing the original URL. Using 302 for a permanent move is one of the most common and costly redirect mistakes. ### How many redirects are too many? One. Every extra hop adds latency and costs crawl budget, and Google stops following after about five. A chain of three should be flattened to one. ### Do redirects lose link equity? Modern Google passes essentially full PageRank through 301s, so the loss is not the issue. Crawl budget, latency and the risk of a broken middle hop are. ### What is a redirect loop? A URL that eventually redirects back to itself. Browsers give up after about twenty hops and show an error; crawlers give up much sooner and drop the URL. ### Does a redirect chain hurt rankings? Indirectly. Google follows up to about five hops, so a long chain risks the destination never being reached, and every hop adds real latency for users. Flatten chains to one hop. ### What is the difference between a 307 and a 302? Both are temporary. A 307 guarantees the request method is preserved, so a POST stays a POST. A 302 historically allowed clients to convert POST to GET, which some still do. ### Should I redirect http to https at the server or the CDN? At the edge, before the request reaches your origin. It is faster and it means the redirect still works if the origin is down. ### How long should I keep old redirects? At least a year, and indefinitely if the old URL still has external links. Redirects are cheap; broken links are not. ## Related tools - [Schema Markup Generator](https://rankcert.com/tools/schema-markup-generator): Generate valid JSON-LD for Organization, SoftwareApplication, Article and BreadcrumbList, ready to paste into your page head. - [FAQ Schema Generator](https://rankcert.com/tools/faq-schema-generator): Turn a list of questions and answers into valid FAQPage JSON-LD, the structured data AI answer engines quote most readily. - [Meta Tags Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/meta-tags-checker): Check any page's title, meta description, canonical, robots and heading structure, and see the exact issues that hurt its rankings. - [Open Graph Preview](https://rankcert.com/tools/open-graph-preview): Preview how your page looks when shared on X, LinkedIn, Slack and Facebook, and find the Open Graph tags you are missing. - [SEO Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/seo-checker): Run eleven on-page checks against any URL: title, description, canonical, headings, alt text, Open Graph, word count and indexability, with the exact fixes. - [Broken Link Checker](https://rankcert.com/tools/broken-link-checker): Crawl any page for broken links, see the status code behind every dead URL, and separate the internal ones that cost you link equity from the external rot.