# Check any page's HTTP status code in seconds

A page can look fine in your browser and still be sending the wrong signal to everyone else. Search engines, link checkers, and other websites do not judge a page by how it looks. They judge it by the HTTP status code the server returns.

A 200 says the page is there and working. A 301 says it moved permanently, and a 302 says the move is temporary. A 404 says the page does not exist, and a 500 says the server ran into a problem. Redirect chains, where one redirect leads to another, are easy to miss and slow everything down.

Before you share a link, publish a migration, or wonder why a page dropped out of search results, check its status code. It takes seconds, and it often explains a problem that looks mysterious from the outside.

You can run that check for free with the [http status code checker](https://vulnerabilitytools.com/tools/http-status-checker) from Vulnerability Tools. Paste in a URL, see the code the server actually returns, and follow the redirect chain if there is one. Fix the codes that should not be there, then check again after the fix.

Make it part of your routine after every launch, redesign, or content move. The pages that matter most should answer with a clean 200, and the ones that moved should redirect in one step, not three.