Redirect is a URL forwarding to another URL. Once a website visitor or a search engine crawler gets to a page with a redirect, they will be sent to a different URL where the redirect is pointing.
Generally, redirects don’t cause any trouble. However, if they are set up incorrectly and point to the wrong destination URLs or form a redirect chain, it may lead to loss of traffic and link equity.
Scanning a website to check the setup of redirect URLs is always a smart idea as regular audits will help you to quickly spot and fix any issues.
To find redirects with DataForSEO On-Page API, you should register and get your api key necessary for authentication.
Learn more about Authentication in our docs >>
As soon as you have the API key, you can audit redirects in a few simple steps.
POST: https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/on_page/task_post
[
{
"target": "dataforseo.com",
"max_crawl_pages": 10,
"tag": "some_string_123",
"pingback_url": "https://your-server.com/pingscript?id=$id&tag=$tag"
}
]
2 Call the Summary endpoint to review collective stats for the website.
GET: https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/on_page/summary/$id
In the "checks" array, find the "is_redirect" counter. If this field shows a value greater than 0, our crawler found the indicated number of redirects on the target website.
3 To extract the list of redirects, call the Pages endpoint, and apply a filter as in the example.
POST: https://api.dataforseo.com/v3/on_page/pages
[
{
"id": "07281559-0695-0216-0000-c269be8b7592",
"filters": ["resource_type", "=", "redirect"]
}
]
The results of the task will contain a list of redirecting URLs along with their status codes, target and source URLs, as well as on-page check-ups and performance metrics.
Useful read:
What are redirect chains and loops and how to check them with On-Page API?