Redirect Gets Traffic

What this check is actually flagging

You redirected a URL. Weeks later, that same old URL is still showing up in your Search Console performance report with its own clicks and impressions, and maybe it is still the address Google lists in the SERP. That is what "Redirect Gets Traffic" means: the source of a redirect is behaving like an independent, indexable page instead of a page whose value has been passed forward to the destination.

In a healthy migration, a 301 tells Google "this content moved, treat the new URL as canonical." Google eventually drops the old URL from the index and consolidates the ranking signals (links, historical relevance, engagement) onto the target. When the old URL keeps earning organic traffic in its own right, that consolidation has not happened, or something is actively blocking it. You end up with authority stranded on an address you told everyone to stop using.

Why a lingering redirect source hurts you

Two problems. First, split equity. If Google still ranks the old URL for some queries and the new URL for others, neither page is getting the full weight of your backlinks and topical history. You are competing with your own ghost. Second, user experience friction. Every visitor who lands on the old URL from search eats an extra hop before they see content. On mobile and on slow connections that hop is measurable latency, and chained redirects make it worse.

There is also a diagnostic angle. A redirect source that keeps ranking is often a symptom of a deeper config issue: a redirect that is really a 302, a redirect chain, a canonical tag that contradicts the redirect, or internal links that keep feeding the old URL fresh crawl signals. The traffic is the smoke. You want the fire.

How Google should process a redirect (and where it stalls)

Stalled: old URL still ranks Old URL 302 / chain / mixed Google keeps old URL indexed and rankable Split equity two weaker pages

How to detect it properly

Do not trust a single tool. Triangulate.

1. Search Console, Performance report. Filter the Pages tab for the old URL. If it still shows clicks and impressions in the last 28 days, Google is still surfacing it. Compare that curve against the new URL: is the new one climbing as the old one falls, or are both flat?
2. URL Inspection. Paste the old URL into GSC URL Inspection. A properly processed redirect reports "Page with redirect" and points at the target. If it says "Submitted and indexed" or shows the old URL as its own canonical, the redirect is not being honored.
3. Screaming Frog. Crawl the old URL directly and read the status code and the redirect chain. You want exactly one hop, a single 301, landing on a 200. Frog will expose 302s, meta refreshes, JavaScript redirects, and chains of three or four hops.
4. Server logs. Look at how Googlebot hits the old URL and what status your server actually returns. Logs do not lie the way a CDN cache or a plugin sometimes does.
5. curl. A quick curl -I against the old URL confirms the raw response header before any browser or cache muddies it.

Reference: what the symptom usually means

How to fix it, step by step

1. Confirm the response is a single 301. Not a 302, not a 307, not a meta refresh, not a JS redirect. A permanent redirect is the only signal that reliably consolidates ranking equity.
2. Collapse chains. If the old URL hops through an intermediate before landing, rewrite the rule so it points straight at the final destination in one step.
3. Kill contradictory signals. If the old page still emits a self canonical or is listed in your sitemap, remove those. You cannot tell Google "this moved" and "this is canonical" at the same time.
4. Fix internal links. Search your codebase, menus, and content for links to the old URL and repoint them at the target. Every internal link to a redirect wastes crawl budget and keeps the old address alive in Google's memory.
5. Resubmit and nudge. Update your XML sitemap to list only the new URL, submit it, and use URL Inspection on the old URL to request Google reprocess it.
6. Then wait. Consolidation is not instant. On a well linked site it can take a few weeks; on a large or slowly crawled site, longer. If the redirect is clean and everything else is consistent, patience is the fix.

What good looks like

The old URL returns one clean 301 to the target. URL Inspection reports "Page with redirect." No internal links point at it, it is out of the sitemap, and its clicks in Search Console are trending toward zero while the target absorbs them. The destination page holds the rankings the old URL used to have, plus whatever it earned on its own. One strong page, not two weak ghosts.

FAQ