I have created over a thousand URL redirect mapping documents during my career. After the mapping is sent to the client, it is a waiting game to get the 301 redirects implemented. A lot of the time I won’t be notified from a dev team about when the redirects were put live or when they decided to remove them. Permanent 301 redirects are an important part of a technical SEO strategy, so I built the Redirectinator to help me monitor future and legacy redirect mappings.
How the Redirectinator Works
The spreadsheet is pretty easy to use since only the first 2 columns are needed. From there, the last 4 columns are auto-filled with redirect mapping data.
- Starting URL: is the URL you want to be redirected.
- Target URL: is the destination of where you want the redirect to be pointed at.
- Result: is determined whether the starting URL matched the final URL.
- HTTP Status: is the monitoring of what is happening to the starting URL. If the URL goes through a redirect chain, it will show the chain. It will also show 4xx and 5xx errors.
- Number of Redirects: is a simple count of redirects in a chain
- Final URL: is a call to the server to find out where the starting URL end on its journey.
YOU CAN EVEN CHECK STAGING SERVER URL REDIRECTS!!!
If your staging server is behind an authentication login, type the Username and Password in the top right side of the sheet and you should be able to check redirects on staging. This is great for checking redirect mappings for replatforming and redesigns.
Sheet Limitations
An extremely large amount of redirects can cause both Google Sheets and the website you are scraping to act up. If this is the case, make multiple copies of the Redirectinator and split your list across them.
Download Your Copy Today!
Get your copy of the Redirectinator Spreadsheet by clicking the link below. As always, this sheet is totally free to do whatever you want. Feel free to tweak it as you need. If you come up with some awesome updates to it, let me know. I can integrate those features into a future version of the Redirectinator.
Download The Redirectinator – Redirect Monitoring Google Sheet Now!