Redirect Chain Analyzer

Trace every redirect chain in bulk during domain migrations to prevent SEO loss from broken or looping redirects. A single redirect loop or chain longer than 3 hops can cause search engines to drop pages from the index entirely. This actor follows 301/302/307/308 redirects for each URL, records every hop, and reports the final destination and status — processing thousands of URLs in minutes.

Features

• Full chain visibility — records every redirect hop with URL, status code, Location header, and resolved next URL
• Bulk processing — analyze thousands of URLs in a single run with configurable concurrency
• Loop detection — identifies redirect loops and chains that exceed the configured hop limit
• HTTP method control — use HEAD requests for speed or GET when servers block HEAD
• Flexible input — accepts bare domains, HTTP URLs, or HTTPS URLs
• Error resilience — reports timeouts and connection errors per URL without stopping the run
• Redirect counting — separates total hops from actual redirect count for clear reporting

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description
urls	array	Yes	—	List of URLs to trace redirect chains for
url	string	No	—	Single URL for backward compatibility. Merged into urls if both are provided.
followRedirects	boolean	No	true	Whether to follow redirect responses or stop at the first hop
maxRedirects	integer	No	10	Maximum number of redirects to follow before stopping
timeoutSeconds	integer	No	15	HTTP timeout in seconds for each request
concurrency	integer	No	10	Number of URLs to process in parallel (1-50)
method	string	No	HEAD	HTTP method to use: HEAD (faster) or GET (more compatible)

Input Example

{
    "urls": [
        "http://example.com",
        "https://example.com/old-page",
        "http://www.example.com"
    ],
    "maxRedirects": 10,
    "method": "HEAD",
    "concurrency": 10
}

Output

Each URL produces one dataset item with the complete redirect chain from input URL to final destination.

• inputUrl (string) — the original URL you provided
• finalUrl (string | null) — the URL after all redirects resolve
• finalStatus (number | null) — HTTP status code of the final destination
• hopCount (number) — total number of hops in the chain (including the final destination)
• redirectCount (number) — number of actual redirects (hopCount minus 1)
• hops (array) — ordered list of hops, each with url, status, location, and nextUrl
• checkedAt (string) — ISO timestamp
• error (string) — error message if the request failed (only present on errors)

Output Example

{
    "inputUrl": "http://example.com",
    "finalUrl": "https://www.example.com/",
    "finalStatus": 200,
    "hopCount": 3,
    "redirectCount": 2,
    "hops": [
        {
            "url": "http://example.com",
            "status": 301,
            "location": "https://example.com/",
            "nextUrl": "https://example.com/"
        },
        {
            "url": "https://example.com/",
            "status": 301,
            "location": "https://www.example.com/",
            "nextUrl": "https://www.example.com/"
        },
        {
            "url": "https://www.example.com/",
            "status": 200,
            "location": null,
            "nextUrl": null
        }
    ],
    "checkedAt": "2025-11-20T14:30:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

Event	Cost
URL Traced	$0.001 per URL

You are charged per URL traced. Platform usage fees apply separately.

Use Cases

• Domain migration validation — verify all old URLs redirect correctly to their new destinations after a migration
• HTTP-to-HTTPS audit — confirm every HTTP URL properly 301-redirects to its HTTPS counterpart
• www/non-www canonicalization — check that www and non-www versions resolve to a single canonical URL
• Redirect chain cleanup — find chains with 3+ hops that slow down crawling and dilute link equity
• Vanity URL verification — confirm short URLs and marketing redirects land on the correct pages

Related Actors

Actor	What it adds
Broken Links Checker	Crawl your site to find broken links — then trace their redirect chains
Hreflang Checker	Verify hreflang target URLs do not redirect, which confuses search engines
XML Sitemap URL Extractor	Extract all URLs from your sitemap to bulk-check their redirect behavior