301 redirect checker: protect search traffic in a site migration
A rebrand or domain move keeps its search traffic only if old URLs send one permanent redirect to the right new page.
A 301 redirect checker confirms that an old URL moves visitors and search engines to its new home with a permanent redirect, in one step, and not a temporary or broken one. If you are renaming a product, merging two sites or moving to a new domain, run seogeoaeo.ai's Redirects, Headers and Host Checker on your most valuable old URLs before and after launch.
Migrations are where companies lose search traffic they spent years building. Rarely is the cause a missing redirect. Usually it is the wrong kind of redirect, or too many of them in a row.
Why the code matters to the business
Google treats 301 and 308 as permanent. With a permanent redirect, search results start showing the new URL. With a temporary one (302 or 307), Google keeps showing the source page. So a rebrand shipped with 302s can leave the old name in search results long after the new site is live.
Redirect settings in hosting panels and frameworks make both kinds easy to pick, and the wrong one looks the same in a browser. A checker reads what the server actually sends, which is the only version that counts.
What to check during a migration
| Check | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Status code on each old URL | 301 or 308 |
| Number of hops | One, straight to the matching new page |
| Final page | The equivalent page, not the home page or a 404 |
| Host versions | http, https, www and bare hosts all end at one URL |
| Headers on the new page | No stray noindex or canonical pointing elsewhere |
The last row catches a common launch mistake: the new site went live with the noindex header it had in staging. The pages look perfect and still drop out of results.
A short process for founders and operators
- List the URLs that earn. Pull your top landing pages from analytics or Search Console. That is the list to protect, not every URL on the site.
- Check them before launch on staging if it is public, so you know the starting state.
- Check them again right after launch. Run each URL through the 301 and host check on seogeoaeo.ai. It shows each hop with its status code, compares host versions, flags headers that hurt indexing, and gives the server rule to change.
- Fix and re-run until each old URL is one permanent hop to the right page.
A run costs 10 credits, and a failed run costs nothing. If you have hundreds of URLs, the HTTP Status Bulk Checker on the same site returns the status and redirect target for a pasted list, then you can use the single-URL check on anything that looks wrong.
Hand it to the team or to an agent
The same check runs over a REST API and as an MCP tool, so an engineer can add it to a deploy script or ask a coding agent to run it after each release. That turns the migration checklist into something that runs on its own rather than a one-day task someone forgets.
When you need more than a checker
A redirect checker answers "does this URL redirect correctly". It does not crawl your whole site or track rankings over the following months. For a large migration, pair it with a full crawl of the old site and watch Search Console for the weeks after launch.
FAQ
Should a domain change use 301 or 308? Either is permanent to Google. 308 also keeps the request method, which matters for forms and APIs; for normal pages both work.
How long should redirects stay in place? Keep them as long as old links point at the old URLs. Removing them sends that traffic to a 404.
Do redirect chains lose ranking? Google follows up to 10 hops, so a short chain still gets crawled. One hop is faster for visitors and clearer for crawlers.