Methodology: This check follows wSEO methodology 1.1. How the assessment works

Independent chain check

Count hops for every variant and identify the longest chain

An internal or external destination does not change the count: two redirects remain a double redirect. Also confirm that the route has not reached another domain or the wrong page.

Four address variants pass through a hop counter that highlights the longest redirect chain
Use the highest redirect count across all tested variants as info.

Browser check

  1. Open Developer Tools → Network and enable Preserve log.
  2. Enter the tested address and open it.
  3. Count document responses with 301, 302, 307 or 308.
  4. Check the final host, path and parameters.
  5. Repeat for HTTP/HTTPS, WWW/non-WWW and old internal URLs.

First response only

curl -sS -I --max-redirs 0 \
  http://www.example.com/

Shows the initial status and Location.

Complete chain

curl -sS -I -L --max-redirs 10 \
  -o /dev/null \
  -w 'redirects=%{num_redirects}\nfinal=%{url_effective}\nstatus=%{http_code}\n' \
  http://www.example.com/

Assessment

Expected and problematic results
URLRedirectsResult
Preferred0Expected
Alternative1Expected
Any2Double
Any3+Chain

Save the source URL, complete sequence, final address and highest num_redirects as evidence. If an optional WWW variant does not exist, that is not a double redirect; availability is evaluated separately.

Sources and documentation

  1. MDN — Redirections in HTTP (link checked 2026-07-22) Supports: Official definition, expected result and limitations of the described diagnostic method.
  2. IETF — RFC 9110 — HTTP Semantics (link checked 2026-07-22) Supports: Official definition, expected result and limitations of the described diagnostic method.

An Automatic check is available at the top of this page. You can independently confirm its result using the manual verification instructions, then fix the issue yourself or order a professional fix.