We all know that we should use 301 redirects to consolidate
link value and ensure each unique page of content has its own unique URL.
Unfortunately the data that some tools provide are not always accurate.

Firefox’s add on tools can help save time and effort when
analyzing websites and redirects. Unfortunately since they are made for
Firefox, they are at the mercy of the way Firefox functions.

Live HTTP headers is a great tool that I use quite a bit to
check to verify the right header information is being
transferred. Unfortunately, Firefox’s “awesome bar” (the part of the browser where you type the URL in) can cause Live HTTP headers to report the wrong
data.

Example:
alltell.com is a vanity URL that is owned by Alltel
Communications, but IS NOT correctly
redirected to the  main Alltel website. When I type in “alltell.com” into the following browsers (and hit enter):

I get the following
results:

Firefox:

Internet Explorer:

Google Chrome:

Results:

• Firefox goes and retrieves the page/site it thinks is most
  related to what you typed in
• IE returns a list of google search results
• Google’s chrome returns a page with a DNS error

On the surface this may not seem like an issue,
but if you are using tools that are built on top of Firefox, the tools could
report back incorrect information.

Live HTTP Headers

In the screenshot above, you can see Live HTTP Headers
reports back there is a 301 redirect from http://www.alltell.com/
to http://www.alltel.com/ when in fact
there is no such redirect.

This can be tested using 3^rd party Search Engine
Friendly redirect tools. In this example, I will use The Search
Engine Friendly Redirect Checker
from webconfs.com.This is a good tool to quickly check if a redirect is set up
properly. The tool does not provide as much information as an internal agency tool but this tool will let us know if a redirect is
“Search Engine Friendly” or “Not Search Engine Friendly”.

Below is the result when I checked to see if alltell.com was
set up properly:

Below is an example
of the response you would receive if your redirect is set up correctly:

As you can see the alltell.com redirect is NOT set up correctly, even
though Live HTTP Headers reported a 301 redirect was in place.

So the main idea here is to always double check your data using different tools to make sure you are getting accurate information. Getting accurate data from the beginning of a project can save you a lot of time, and aggravation in the long run.