🔗 URL Redirect Tracer & Unshortener

Unshorten any link and follow its entire redirect chain — and now get a whole lot more than just the final URL. Expand bit.ly, t.co, lnkd.in, youtu.be, amzn.to and any 301 / 302 / 307 / 308 short link, plus meta-refresh and JavaScript redirects that most tools miss, to reveal the real destination behind any link. No API key, no login, bulk-ready.

Great for link safety & phishing checks, marketing attribution (UTM / gclid / fbclid), and SEO / competitive research.

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✨ Now richer — what you get for every URL

• Every hop of the chain, each with: status, response_time_ms, redirect_type (301 permanent / 302 / 307 / 308 / meta-refresh / javascript), server, content_type and cookies set.
• The real final destination — even when it's hidden behind a meta-refresh or a window.location JS redirect that stops other tracers.
• Landing-page intel: final_title, final_description, final_canonical, Open Graph (final_og) and final_favicon.
• Marketing attribution: all utm_*, gclid, fbclid, msclkid, ttclid, igshid, mc_* and other tracking params on the landing URL — plus the full final_query_params.
• 🛡️ Security scoring: a risk_score (0–100) and risk_flags array — https_downgrade, cross_domain, many_redirects, ip_as_host, punycode_idn, non_standard_port, shortener_chain, insecure_http — to spot sketchy links at a glance. Plus is_shortener (+ shortener_domain), cross_domain, downgraded_to_http, punycode and loop detection.
• Domain & network intel: final_domain, final_registrable_domain (eTLD+1), final_ip, hostname_chain (every domain visited), final_scheme.
• Marketer's clean link: clean_url — the final URL with all tracking params stripped off, ready to share.
• At-a-glance summary: status_chain (e.g. 301 → 302 → 200), hop_count, total_time_ms, plus response final_content_length, final_cache_control, final_hsts and final_meta_robots / final_content_language.

Everything runs with manual redirect following (no silent auto-redirects), so you see each step — not just where you ended up.

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🧾 Input

{
  "urls": ["https://bit.ly/xxxx", "t.co/yyyy", "youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"],
  "maxHops": 12
}

Field	Type	Description
urls	array	Links to trace/unshorten (with or without https://).
maxHops	integer	Max redirects to follow (1–25, default 12).

📤 Output (one record per URL)

{
  "input_url": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "final_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&feature=youtu.be",
  "final_status": 200,
  "status_chain": "303 → 200",
  "hop_count": 2,
  "redirected": true,
  "total_time_ms": 412,
  "is_shortener": true,
  "shortener_domain": "youtu.be",
  "cross_domain": true,
  "downgraded_to_http": false,
  "final_domain": "youtube.com",
  "final_scheme": "https",
  "final_title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
  "final_canonical": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "final_og": { "title": "...", "image": "..." },
  "tracking_params": { "feature": "youtu.be" },
  "hops": [
    { "url": "https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ", "status": 303, "response_time_ms": 180, "redirect_type": "303 see-other", "location": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=..." },
    { "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...", "status": 200, "response_time_ms": 232, "content_type": "text/html" }
  ]
}

💡 Use cases

• Link safety / phishing — see the true destination, cross-domain jumps and HTTPS→HTTP downgrades before clicking.
• Marketing attribution — capture every UTM / click-ID that lands on the page.
• SEO & research — check redirect types (301 vs 302), canonical tags and chain latency at scale.
• Social / affiliate — expand t.co, bit.ly, amzn.to, linktr.ee and friends in bulk.

💳 Pricing

Simple pay-per-result: you're charged per URL traced — no subscriptions, no platform fees to worry about. Bulk a thousand links in one run.

🛟 Support

A link misbehaved or you have an idea for another field? Open an Issue — we reply fast and keep improving this Actor. If it saved you time, a ⭐ review means a lot.