How to Verify 301 Redirects (and Fix Chains and 302s) in 2026

Ask any SEO and they will tell you 301 redirects are essential when URLs change. But redirects are often set up by a developer or a plugin, and it is common to find a temporary 302, a chain of several hops, or a loop instead of a clean 301. It only takes a minute to verify 301 redirects, and doing so protects the rankings and links of your old pages. Here is how to verify 301 redirects in 2026, updated from Nick LeRoy’s original guest post.

Quick answer: Run curl -I -L https://old-url in a terminal, or open DevTools (F12) > Network with “Preserve log” ticked and load the old URL. The first response should show status 301 (or 308) and a Location header pointing straight to the final URL, which returns 200. Online redirect checkers, the Redirect Path extension and crawlers like Screaming Frog do the same in bulk.

301 vs 302 vs 307 vs 308

• 301 Moved Permanently: the standard permanent redirect. Search engines replace the old URL with the new one and pass its signals.
• 308 Permanent Redirect: like 301 but keeps the request method; fine for SEO too.
• 302 Found and 307 Temporary: temporary moves. Google may keep the old URL indexed; if a “temporary” redirect stays for months, Google may treat it as permanent, but don’t rely on that.

Google has said 301s no longer lose PageRank, so the old worry about losing a percentage of value is gone. What still hurts is the wrong code, long chains, loops and redirects to irrelevant pages.

5 ways to verify 301 redirects

1. Browser DevTools

1. Press F12, open Network and tick Preserve log.
2. Load the old URL. The first row shows the status (301) and, in Headers, the Location it points to.

2. curl in a terminal

curl -I -L https://example.com/old-page/

This prints the headers for every hop, so you can count them. Windows 10 and 11 include curl.

3. An online redirect checker

httpstatus.io checks many URLs at once and shows each hop and status code.

4. A browser extension

Extensions such as Ayima’s Redirect Path show redirect codes in the toolbar as you browse. (The original post used the Fiddler debugging proxy, which still works but is more than most people need.)

5. Crawl the whole site

Screaming Frog SEO Spider (free up to 500 URLs) lists every redirect, chain and loop. Google Search Console’s Pages report also shows “Page with redirect”.

Common redirect problems to fix

• 302 instead of 301: change permanent moves to 301 in your plugin, .htaccess or server config.
• Redirect chains: http > https > www > new URL. Point every old URL straight to the final one.
• Loops: A redirects to B and B back to A; the page never loads.
• Internal links to redirected URLs: update them to the final URL. Here’s how to find and fix broken internal links.
• Everything to the homepage: Google treats irrelevant redirects as soft 404s. Redirect to the closest matching page, or return 410 Gone if nothing matches.

Don’t miss free link equity

Check Search Console or your SEO tool for external links pointing to pages that now return 404. A 301 to the closest live page recovers that value, a tactic we also used to recover link juice from deleted subdomains.

FAQ

How long should I keep 301 redirects?

At least a year, and ideally permanently for URLs that have backlinks.

Do 301 redirects hurt SEO?

No, when they point to a relevant page in one hop. Chains and irrelevant targets are the problem.

How do I add a 301 redirect in WordPress?

Use Rank Math’s Redirections module or the Redirection plugin, or add rules to .htaccess.

Originally written by guest author Nick LeRoy, then a search marketing specialist at Minnesota web design firm DKS Systems. Updated for 2026 by QuickOnlineTips.