Redirect Checker & URL Expander

What the checker follows

A link can send you on in four different ways, and a checker that only reads status codes misses two of them. Every step in the chain above is labelled with the one it used.

301, 302, 307 or 308?

The number tells the browser — and more importantly search engines — how to treat the move.

The mistake that costs rankings is a 302 on a move that is actually permanent — typically the switch from http to https, or from www to the bare domain. Search engines treat 301 and 308 as the instruction to carry ranking across; the checker flags a temporary code on exactly those moves.

Why a phone or Googlebot can end up somewhere else

Many sites decide where to send you from the User-Agent header: phones to a mobile site or an app store, crawlers to a lighter page, desktops to the full site. That is usually harmless. It becomes a problem when search engines are shown a different destination from the one people get, which is exactly the kind of mismatch that is invisible from your own browser.

Tick Compare all four and the same link is traced as Chrome on a desktop, Safari on an iPhone, Googlebot and Bingbot at the same moment. Any identity that lands somewhere different from Chrome is highlighted.

One caveat worth knowing: large sites can confirm a real Googlebot by its network address. A site that does that will treat this check as an ordinary visitor, so a Googlebot trace shows what a site does on the user agent alone.

Short links: bit.ly, t.co, TinyURL and the rest

A short link is a redirect by design, and it tells you nothing about where it leads. Paste it here and the whole path is listed, including the hops a shortener adds after the first one — many go through an http hop, a tracking hop or a second shortener before the real page.

Links shared on X are wrapped in t.co whatever they originally were, so a t.co address hides even a plain, full-length URL. Pasting it here shows the original.

How to read the result

Every link gets one card. The top line is the address you entered; the arrow line under it is where the link really ends, with the page title when there is one.

• Status is the first answer the server gave. A 3xx here means the link redirects; a 200 means it opened directly; 4xx and 5xx are errors.
• Redirects counts the hops between the link and the final page. One is normal, two is common, three or more is a chain worth shortening.
• Response is the total time for the whole chain, measured from our server.
• View details on any step opens the IP address that answered, whether the hop used HTTPS and its certificate verified, the server software, the HTTP version and every response header the server sent.
• Badges such as Cloudflare, nginx or WordPress name the platform the final page appears to run on, read from its headers.

To keep a record, Copy for Excel / Sheets puts the chain on the clipboard as a table: paste into a spreadsheet and every column lands in its own cell. Bulk runs also offer a CSV download.

Redirect chain problems and how to fix them

If you run WordPress, our guides on fixing “redirected you too many times” and redirecting www to non-www with .htaccess cover the two most common causes.

Every redirect tool on Sigma Wire

They all run the same checker; each page is set up for one job.

• URL Expander — reveal the real address behind any short link before you open it.
• Bulk Redirect Checker — up to 50 links at once, with expected destinations for site migrations.
• 301 Redirect Checker — confirm a move is permanent and spot 302s that should be 301s.
• t.co Link Expander — paste a post from X and every t.co link in it is expanded.
• Bitly Link Checker — see where a bit.ly link goes without clicking it.
• TinyURL Expander — preview a TinyURL link's destination.

Tracking parameters and the clean link

Marketing links often arrive carrying utm_source, fbclid, gclid and similar tags that exist to record the click, not to load the page. When the destination has them, the checker lists them and offers a copy of the same address with only those tags removed — parameters the page may actually need are kept.

What the checker cannot see

• Scripts are read, not run. A JavaScript redirect is found in the page source and followed when the page is a redirect screen. A destination built at run time, or reached only after a click or a countdown, will not appear.
• Bot checks stop the trace. Sites behind a Cloudflare or similar challenge answer automated requests with the challenge page. The trace stops there and names the service, rather than reporting a status code that means nothing.
• Location matters. Requests come from a server in the United States with no cookies and no sign-in, so links that route by country or by login can end differently for you.
• Where, not whether. The checker shows where a link goes and a few signals worth a second look. It does not judge whether a site is malicious; for that, scan the final address with a malware scanner such as VirusTotal — the result has a button for it.

Privacy

The links you check are not stored. The requests are made by our server, which means a suspicious link is followed without the destination ever loading in your browser, running its scripts or seeing your address.

Questions

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