How it works
Once a day, we follow the redirects of your monitored URL, hop by hop, and check:
- Loops: a redirect that leads back to an address already visited never reaches a page.
- Chains: more than 3 redirects before the page slow down every visit and lose search ranking along the way. Over 10, browsers give up.
- www and non-www: one should redirect to the other. When both serve the site, search engines see two copies, and ranking is split between them.
- Canonical: the page's
<link rel="canonical">should point to the same host, not to another domain.
Statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| OK | The page is reached in 3 redirects or fewer, with one host and a matching canonical. |
| Warning | A long chain, both www and non-www serving the site, a canonical on another host, or we could not connect. |
| Failed | A redirect loop, or more than 10 redirects. |
By default you are notified of warnings and failures.
Fixing common problems
- Long chains: redirect straight to the final URL. A common chain is
http://example.com→https://example.com→https://www.example.com→https://www.example.com/en/. Redirecthttp://example.comto the last one in one hop. - Both www and non-www serve the site: pick one, and redirect the other to it with a
301. - Loops: often an HTTPS redirect in the application that fights with the proxy or CDN. Make the application trust the proxy's
X-Forwarded-Protoheader.