Audit your redirects for SEO
Redirect issues affect crawl budget, indexing, and canonicalization, so they show up in a technical SEO audit. Chains, loops, mixed HTTP/HTTPS, and user-agent discrepancies are the ones a URL inspector can catch. Here's how to find and fix them.
What to look for
Redirect chains
A redirect chain is when URL A redirects to B, which redirects to C, which redirects to D. Long chains cost crawl budget and slow the page for real users on every hop. A chain of 3 or more hops is worth collapsing. Our inspector shows the full chain hop-by-hop so you can see exactly where to short-circuit it.
Redirect loops
URL A redirects to B, which redirects back to A. The browser gives up and shows an error. Our tool detects loops and reports the exact cycle.
Mixed HTTP/HTTPS
If your HTTP-to-HTTPS redirect goes through an intermediate hop (http -> http://www -> https://www), that's an unnecessary chain. Each check shows the protocol at every hop.
User-agent discrepancies
If Googlebot sees a different redirect than Chrome, your indexed content is wrong. Use the Compare User Agents feature to check.
Soft 404s
A page that redirects to the homepage instead of returning 404. Google treats this as a soft 404 and may deindex the original URL. Batch check your old URLs to find these.
SEO redirect audit checklist
- Import your sitemap.xml into a batch check
- Filter results for 3xx status codes -- these are your redirects
- Sort by "Redirects" column to find chains (2+ hops)
- Check your top 10 pages with Compare User Agents
- Export to Google Sheets for your records
- Set up a monitor to catch regressions weekly
Ongoing monitoring
A one-time audit catches today's issues. A monitor catches tomorrow's. Set up a weekly check on your top pages and get notified via webhook if anything changes. Results auto-export to Google Sheets so you have a historical record.
Run your SEO redirect audit
Import your sitemap, batch-check every URL, and export the chains to a sheet.