How to use Hopcheck

What is a redirect chain, and why would I care about the middle?

A redirect chain is the sequence of URLs a link passes through before arriving at its final destination. Most tools show you only the start and the end — but what changes in the middle matters. A URL can:

• Lose its query string (?ref=summer becomes nothing), breaking attribution
• Pass through a plain http:// hop, carrying the whole URL — including any query parameters — in the clear over the network
• Redirect into a loop, making the page unreachable
• Use a 301 (permanent) when the owner intended a 302 (temporary), or vice versa

Hopcheck shows every hop so you can see these changes. If you are a marketer sending a campaign URL or a support staff verifying a short link a customer sent you, the middle is the part that matters.

Why does my URL redirect twice (or more) instead of once?

Multiple redirects are common. A short link service may redirect to a tracking platform, which then redirects to the final destination. Or a site may have moved from http:// to https:// and then from example.com to www.example.com.

Each hop is a separate HTTP response. Hopcheck follows them one at a time and shows the full sequence. If the chain is longer than you expect, inspect each hop: one of them may be an intermediary you did not know about.

I got a "redirect loop" result — what does that mean?

A redirect loop means the same URL appeared twice in the chain. The server keeps bouncing the request between two or more URLs without ever landing on a 200 response. This is a broken link: the page is unreachable by any browser.

Hopcheck stops at the loop and reports it as a distinct verdict — not as a chain that simply stopped. If you own the URL, you need to fix the server-side redirect configuration. If you do not own it, the link is broken and you should report it to the site owner.

Why did the query string disappear? I pasted a URL with ?ref= and it did not appear in the final result.

The server at some hop in the chain issued a redirect that either omitted the query string or replaced it with a different one. This is not a bug in Hopcheck — it is the exact finding Hopcheck exists to detect.

Look at the hop where the query string changed. It will be flagged in amber with a QUERY DROPPED or QUERY REWRITTEN tag. That is the server that broke your link. Common causes: a CMS with aggressive redirect rules, a load balancer that strips parameters, or a URL-shortening service that discards everything after the short code.

The check says "did not complete" — what went wrong?

A check that did not complete means Hopcheck could not reach the server at a specific hop. Possible reasons:

• DNS resolution failure — the domain name does not exist or could not be resolved
• Connection timeout — the server did not respond within the time limit
• Connection refused — the server actively rejected the connection
• Invalid or unreachable host — the domain exists but the server is down

This is a failed check, not a finding about your link. Hopcheck reports the hop number where the failure occurred so you can identify which server in the chain is unreachable. If the first hop fails, the URL itself may be invalid or the site may be down. If a later hop fails, the earlier hops were valid but the chain could not be completed.

Does Hopcheck store the URLs I check? Is my data private?

No. Hopcheck is stateless by design. The URL you submit is sent to the server only to perform the redirect check, and no part of the check is stored, logged, or retained. There is no database, no key-value store, and no persistent storage on the server. There are no accounts, no sign-ins, and no way to retrieve a previous check.

See the privacy policy for the full details, including what infrastructure-level information the hosting platform (Cloudflare) may capture for operational purposes.