How to Track a Redirect in Google Analytics

Changing a post's URL or migrating a section of your website can feel like performing digital surgery. You’ve neatly set up your 301 redirects, but a nagging question remains: are they actually working? Wondering whether you're losing valuable traffic or SEO equity in the process is a common concern. This tutorial will walk you through exactly how to track those redirects directly within Google Analytics 4, so you can have concrete data and peace of mind.

We will cover two powerful methods - a quick manual check for individual links and a more robust, automated system using Google Tag Manager for ongoing monitoring.

Why Tracking Redirects Is Worth Your Time

Before jumping into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Tracking your redirects isn't just about technical validation, it’s about protecting your key business assets. Here are a few reasons it’s so important:

• Preserving SEO Equity: Redirects, particularly 301s, are designed to pass ranking signals from an old URL to a new one. By tracking them, you can confirm that traffic is flowing as expected, giving you a strong indicator that search engines are recognizing the change and transferring authority.
• Protecting the User Experience: A broken redirect leads to a 404 error page, which is a dead end for users. Monitoring your redirects helps you quickly spot and fix these issues, keeping visitors engaged and preventing them from bouncing off your site in frustration.
• Validating Technical Implementations: You or your development team set up the redirects, but are they firing correctly? Direct tracking provides undeniable proof that the technical side is sound, taking the guesswork out of website maintenance and migrations.
• Monitoring Campaign Performance: If you use shortened or vanity URLs in marketing campaigns that redirect to a final landing page, tracking ensures they’re working properly and that you’re not wasting ad spend on broken links.

Method 1: The Quickest and Easiest Way to Track a Redirect

If you just need to check a single redirect to confirm it's working and passing information correctly, the easiest method involves using UTM parameters and Google Analytics' Realtime report. Think of this as a spot-check rather than a permanent monitoring system.

Using UTM Parameters for One-Time Checks

The logic is simple: we'll add special tracking parameters to the original URL (the one that redirects). Then, we will check to see if those same parameters appear on the final destination URL when we land on it. If they do, the redirect is working as it should.

Follow these steps:

1. Get your original URL. This is the URL you expect to redirect from. For example: https://www.yourshop.com/old-blog-post

2. Build a URL with UTM Parameters. Use an online tool like Google's Campaign URL Builder or just append them manually. Create a unique set of parameters that you can easily identify.

Here are some sample parameters you could use:

• utm_source=redirect_tracker
• utm_medium=internal_test
• utm_campaign=winter_url_update

Your full URL will look like this:

https://www.yourshop.com/old-blog-post?utm_source=redirect_tracker&utm_medium=internal_test&utm_campaign=winter_url_update

3. Open the URL in an Incognito Browser. Copy the full URL with the UTM parameters and paste it into a new incognito or private browser window. Hitting enter should immediately redirect you to the new destination page.

4. Check Google Analytics Realtime Reports. Log in to your GA4 property and navigate to Reports > Realtime. Look at the cards for "Traffic source" and "Views by Event count."

You'll want to find the "Session source / medium" or "Session campaign" dimension. If your redirect is working correctly, you should see the UTM parameters you just created appearing in real time:

• Session source: redirect_tracker
• Session medium: internal_test
• Session campaign: winter_url_update

If you see these values successfully attributed to your session, congratulations! Your redirect works and is correctly passing along URL parameters.

Method 2: A More Robust Way to Monitor Redirects with Google Tag Manager

The UTM method is great for quick checks, but it's not practical for monitoring all your redirects at scale. For a more permanent and automated solution, we can use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to create a custom event that fires every time someone lands on a page via an internal redirect.

Understanding the Logic

Here’s the core idea: when a redirect from your own site happens (e.g., from yourwebsite.com/page-a to yourwebsite.com/page-b), the browser's "referrer" is the original URL. A normal visit, however, would have a referrer like google.com or facebook.com, or be empty for direct traffic. We can use GTM to detect when an internal page is the referrer and send a special event to GA4 when that happens.

This process has four steps inside of GTM.

Step 1: Enable the "Referrer" Variable in GTM

First, we need GTM to be able to "see" the referring URL. This is easy to do by enabling a built-in variable.

1. Navigate to your GTM container and click on Variables in the left-hand menu.
2. In the "Built-In Variables" section, click Configure.
3. Scroll down and check the box next to Referrer.

That's it. GTM can now access the referring URL for any page view.

Step 2: Create a Trigger for Internal Redirections

Next, we will create a trigger that fires only when a visitor lands on a page from another page on your own domain. This is how we isolate redirect traffic from regular traffic.

1. Go to Triggers in the left sidebar and click New.
2. Give the trigger a descriptive name, like "Event - Internal Redirect."
3. Click on "Trigger Configuration" and choose Page View as the trigger type. (Some prefer "Window Loaded" for more accuracy, but "Page View" is typically fine).
4. Under "This trigger fires on," select Some Page Views.
5. Now set up the firing conditions as follows:
6. Click Save to finish creating the trigger.

Step 3: Build the GA4 Event Tag

Now, we create the tag that sends our custom event and its associated data over to Google Analytics whenever the trigger we just built is activated.

1. Navigate to Tags in the GTM menu and click New.
2. Name your tag something clear, such as "GA4 - Event - Internal Redirect."
3. Under "Tag Configuration," choose Google Analytics: GA4 Event.
4. For "Configuration Tag," select your main GA4 configuration tag (you should already have one).
5. For "Event Name," type in internal_redirect. It's best practice to use lowercase and underscores.
6. Next, and this is where the magic happens, click on "Event Parameters" and add the following two rows:
7. These parameters will tell us precisely which URL the user was redirected from, and which URL they ultimately landed on.
8. Finally, under "Triggering," select the “Event - Internal Redirect” trigger you created in the previous step.
9. Click Save.

Once you’ve saved, remember to use GTM’s Preview mode to test that your tag is firing correctly, and then click Submit to publish your changes.

How to See Your Redirect Data in GA4

After your GTM container is published, GA4 will start collecting the internal_redirect event data. But to make this data useful in reporting, you have one more step: registering your event parameters as custom dimensions.

Registering Your Custom Dimensions

1. In GA4, go to the Admin section (the gear icon in the bottom-left).
2. Under the "Data display" column, click on Custom definitions.
3. Click the Create custom dimensions button.
4. First, let's create our "from" dimension:
5. Save it, then click Create custom dimensions again for the "to" dimension:

Important Note: It can take 24-48 hours for new custom dimension data to fully populate in GA4 reports. Don't worry if you don't see it available immediately.

Building a Redirect Report in Explorations

Once data starts flowing in, the best place to analyze it is in the "Explore" section of GA4.

1. Navigate to Explore and select a Free form exploration.
2. In the "Variables" column, click the "+" next to Dimensions and import Redirect From and Redirect To.
3. In the same column, click the "+" next to Metrics and import Event count.
4. Drag Redirect From into the Rows section of the "Tab Settings" column. You can also add Redirect To right below it for more detail.
5. Drag Event count into the Values section.
6. Finally, under the Filters section, create a filter for Event name -- exactly matches -- internal_redirect.

Instantly, you will have a clean, easy-to-read report showing every internal redirect that has occurred on your site, which exact pages were involved, and how many times it has happened.

Final Thoughts

Now you have two reliable methods for validating and monitoring your redirects. You can either perform a quick spot-check with UTMs for immediate verification or set up a robust, automated tracking system with Google Tag Manager for a complete overview. Taking the time to track redirects moves them from a 'set it and forget it' task to a monitored, measurable part of your site's health.

Setting up detailed tracking like this often leads to deeper questions, like "How does the behavior of redirected users compare to other users?" or "Which marketing campaigns drove traffic that was later redirected and converted?" This is where the manual report-building process can become cumbersome. We built Graphed to remove that friction. After connecting Google Analytics, you can simply ask questions in plain English, and our AI data analyst builds a real-time dashboard for you in seconds, helping you get from data collection to decision-making much faster.