Domain & Website SEO Tools
WWW Redirect Checker
Check whether www and non-www versions of your domain redirect consistently.
- Free to use
- No sign-up
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About this tool
Make sure your site lives at one consistent address. The checker requests both the www and the bare version of your hostname and shows whether one cleanly forwards to the other.
How to use it
- Enter your hostname, for example
example.com. - Run the check.
- Review the status code and destination for each version.
What a good setup looks like
One version returns 200 and the other answers with a 301 permanent redirect to it, ideally over HTTPS in a single hop — for example http://www.example.com → https://example.com.
Why it matters
- Search engines may treat the two versions as duplicates and split ranking signals.
- Inbound references pointing to the wrong version lose some of their value.
- Cookies, analytics and login sessions can behave inconsistently across both.
www or not?
Either is fine. Pick one, redirect the other with a 301, and use the same choice in your canonical tags, sitemap and Search Console property.
How it differs from Redirect Checker
This test focuses only on the www and non-www pair. Use our Redirect Checker to trace the full path of any individual URL.
Limitations
Results reflect your server, CDN and DNS settings at the moment of the test. Firewalls or bot protection may respond differently to automated requests.
A worked example
A consultancy discovers that both example.com and www.example.com load the site with status 200. Google has indexed a mix of both. Adding a single 301 from www to the bare name, and updating the canonical tags, consolidates everything onto one version over the following weeks.
How to set up the redirect
- Apache: add a rewrite rule in
.htaccess. - Nginx: add a separate server block that returns 301.
- Cloudflare and most hosts: use the built-in redirect or "page rules" setting.
- WordPress: make sure the Site Address setting matches your choice.
Check the full chain
Ideally every version — http, https, www and non-www — reaches the final address in one hop. Two or three hops still work but add delay; test each combination with Redirect Checker.
After switching
- Update internal references to the chosen version.
- Use the same version in your sitemap.
- Verify the preferred version in Search Console.
Related tools
- Redirect Checker – trace any address hop by hop
- SSL Checker – confirm both versions are covered
- XML Sitemap Generator – list the chosen version
Glossary
- Apex or root – the name without www, such as example.com.
- Canonical tag – a line in the page head that names the preferred address.
- 301 – a permanent redirect that passes ranking signals.
Keeping these three consistent tells search engines exactly which version of your site to index.