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How to Check Redirect Chains with Chrome DevTools

SEOAuditorPublished Updated 5 views

No extension needed. Chrome DevTools Network panel shows every redirect hop a URL takes, status codes, and timing — here's how to read it.

How to Check Redirect Chains with Chrome DevTools

Open the Network panel

Right-click anywhere in Chrome, choose Inspect, then switch to the Network tab. Check the box that says Preserve log. This is critical — without it, Chrome clears the network log the moment a redirect lands on a new page, and you lose the chain.

Load the URL you want to test

Type the URL into the address bar and hit enter. Watch the Network panel populate. The first request in the list is the one you care about. Click it.

In the Headers tab, scroll to the Response Headers section. You'll see status codes on the left. A redirect chain shows up as multiple entries, each with a 301, 302, 307, or 308 status code, followed by a Location header pointing to the next hop.

Reading the chain

Click each request in the chain and look at two things: the status code and the Location header. The status tells you what kind of redirect it is. The Location tells you where it goes next.

Status 200 at the end means the chain landed on a working page. Status 404 or 500 means something broke along the way. If you see a chain longer than two or three hops, that's worth investigating — each hop adds latency and weakens SEO signal.

Filtering for clarity

The Network panel fills with every resource the page loads — images, scripts, stylesheets. To focus on the redirect chain itself, type document into the Filter box. This narrows the list to the main HTML document requests, which is exactly what a redirect chain produces.

Copying the result

Right-click the first request, choose Copy, then Copy as cURL. Paste it into a text editor and you'll see the full request including all redirects. This is handy for sharing with a developer or logging for an audit.

What this catches that extensions miss

Browser extensions that check redirect chains often run their own requests and may not match what a real user's browser experiences. DevTools shows you exactly what Chrome did, including caching behavior and any redirects triggered by JavaScript after the initial page load. It's the ground truth.

#redirect chain#chrome devtools#seo audit#network panel

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