Redirect Monitoring

Analyzes redirect chains to detect unnecessary redirects, redirect loops, and incorrect final destinations. Excessive redirects slow down page loads and can confuse search engines.

How It Works

Hoppla follows the redirect chain from your URL and records each hop, capturing the HTTP status code, destination URL, and response time at every step. The full chain is analyzed to identify issues, and is compared against the previous check to detect changes (added or removed hops, changed targets, changed status codes).

What Hoppla Detects

• Long redirect chains -- More than 3 hops, adding latency with each redirect
• Redirect loops -- Circular redirects that never resolve (A -> B -> A)
• Unexpected final destination -- The chain ends at a URL different from what you expect
• Mixed-protocol redirects -- HTTPS to HTTP downgrades within the chain
• Temporary redirects used permanently -- 302/307 used where 301/308 would be more appropriate for SEO

Configuration

Setting	Description	Default
URL	The starting URL to follow	Monitor URL
Check interval	How often to check the redirect chain	User-configurable

The chain-length warning threshold is fixed at 3 hops, and the hard cap on the number of redirects Hoppla will follow is 10. Neither value is configurable per monitor.

Results

Each check records the full redirect chain:

Field	Description
Hop number	Position in the chain (1, 2, 3, ...)
URL	The URL at this step
Status code	HTTP status (301, 302, 307, 308)
Response time	Time for this individual hop (ms)
Total time	Cumulative time through the entire chain (ms)

Example Result

Redirect chain for http://example.com (3 hops, 245ms total):

  1. http://example.com
     → 301 → https://example.com          (62ms)
  2. https://example.com
     → 301 → https://www.example.com      (58ms)
  3. https://www.example.com
     → 200 OK                             (125ms)

Alerts

Event	Trigger	Severity
warning.redirect_chain	Chain exceeds 3 hops, ends at an error status, contains a loop, or downgrades protocol	Warning

The alert includes the full redirect chain, the number of hops, and a description of the specific issue detected (too long, loop, protocol downgrade, or an error at the final destination).

Best Practices

• Keep redirect chains to 1-2 hops maximum
• Use 301 (permanent) redirects for SEO when the move is permanent
• Avoid chaining http -> https -> www -> final; go directly to the canonical URL