Redirect chains are killing your crawl budget without you knowing it. A redirect chain happens when URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects to URL C—and sometimes that goes on for 4, 5, or even 6 hops before the user finally lands on the actual page.
Most SEOs catch obvious 301 redirects, but chains fly under the radar. You'll lose about 2-5% of link equity per redirect hop, Google recrawls redirect chains more slowly than direct URLs, and every hop adds 50-200ms of latency that pushes your Core Web Vitals down. The real issue is that redirect chains compound—one broken chain buried in your site structure can waste thousands of crawl requests every month that Google could've spent on new content.
What Is a Redirect Chain Checker?
Redirect Chain Checker is a free browser-based tool that traces any URL's full redirect path from start to finish. You paste in a single URL, and the tool maps every hop visually, showing you exactly where the chain breaks, loops, or wastes equity. It detects chains 3+ hops long, spots infinite redirect loops (a real problem that kills indexing), and shows you the HTTP status code at each step.
No login required—just load the tool and start checking URLs immediately.
Why It Matters for SEO
Redirect chains eat your SEO performance in three specific ways. First, they cost you link equity: a URL with a 3-hop chain passes roughly 88% of its original authority to the final destination (that's 95% per hop). Second, they slow crawling: Google's crawlers have to make three separate requests to reach the destination, which burns through your crawl budget faster than you think—Moz's data shows sites lose 15-20% of available crawl capacity when chains hit 3+ hops. Third, they add real latency to user experience: each redirect hop typically adds 100-150ms of delay, and when you're already at a 2.5-second page load time, that matters for your Core Web Vitals.
The worst part? If you've got 50 URLs in a chain situation, you're multiplying that damage across 50 different pages.
How to Use It
- Go to [Redirect Chain Checker](https://scrawl.tools/tools/redirect-chain-checker) — no setup needed, no account creation.
- Enter the URL you want to check — paste in any URL (doesn't have to be your own domain) and click the button to start the trace.
- Review the visual chain diagram — the tool shows you every hop, the HTTP status codes, and flags any loops or problematic chains in red.
That's it. Takes about 10 seconds per URL.
What the Results Tell You
The chain diagram shows you each redirect step with its status code (301, 302, 307, etc.) and the final destination URL. If you see a chain longer than 2 hops, you've found a problem—most SEOs aim for 1 hop maximum. The tool highlights redirect loops immediately: if URL A redirects to B, and B redirects back to A, you'll see it flagged, and that URL won't index at all.
The status codes matter too. A 301 (permanent redirect) passes equity; a 302 (temporary redirect) doesn't. If your redirect chain mixes 301s with 302s, you'll lose equity mid-chain. The tool also shows you the final HTTP response code—if it's a 404, the chain leads nowhere and you've wasted crawl budget.
3 Mistakes Most People Make
Mistake 1: Assuming all chains are the same length. You might think you're redirecting A→B, but there's actually an old chain buried in your site that goes A→B→C→D. You won't see this without checking—and most sites have at least 10-15 forgotten chains like this. The Redirect Chain Checker shows you the reality, not your assumption.
Mistake 2: Not checking your own redirects after a migration. You redirect /old-page to /new-page, and months later that new page redirects again to /current-page because you restructured. Now you've got a chain. Without checking, you're bleeding equity and crawl budget. Most migrations create 5-8 accidental chains that sit for months.
Mistake 3: Ignoring HTTP header redirects in your CMS. Your CMS might be adding a redirect, your theme might be adding another, and your security plugin might be adding a third. You can't see these in your redirect rules—you have to actually trace the URL. The tool catches them all in one diagram.
When to Run This Check
Check redirect chains after any domain migration, redesign, or CMS change. Also run it on URLs that get a lot of internal links but aren't ranking as well as expected—redirect chains are often the culprit. If you notice a URL took a ranking drop after a site change, trace it before you blame algorithm updates. You should check at least 50-100 of your top landing pages annually; if you find chains on those, fix them immediately.
The tool is also useful for auditing competitor URLs. If a competitor's ranking URL has a long redirect chain, they're losing equity they don't realize—that's competitive advantage for you if you don't make the same mistake.
Stop assuming your redirects are clean. Check your URLs with the Redirect Chain Checker today and fix what you find—you'll recover crawl budget and link equity that's just sitting there unused.