User Guide

Introduction

WhereGoes API allows you to remotely trace or follow a URL through its full route without actually visiting the URL. That is the overall main functionality, but of course, the use cases can vary:

Use Cases

• Determine if a URL redirects somewhere
• Troubleshoot redirection issues
• Determine if tiny tracking links are redirecting to the correct destination.
• Discover redirect chains for SEO purposes.
• Determine if a URL 404s
• And much more…

Things You Should Know

The public values are in play if you use the website form to follow a URL while not logged in.

• API is not public yet. This API is in the testing phase, and notifications about the launch date will be sent to our Newsletter subscribers.
• Max Redirections – 100 redirects (10 public). This is set high so that you can troubleshoot wide redirect loops. Once this limit has been reached, the process will stop and return an error. Spammy links usually have anywhere from 8 – 70 redirects in their redirect chain. Some have even more than that!
• Max File Size – 500k (250k public) – This is the size of the HTML that is being retrieved.
• Connection Timeout – 15 seconds (10 seconds public) – The connection timeout starts over once the server responds with a status response code.
• Timeout Total – 120 seconds (60 seconds public) – This entire process has to be completed within the timeout total limit. If that limit is reached, the overall process will terminate and respond with an error.
• Rate Limit – 3 API requests second – If you hit this limit, you will be temporarily blocked for 10 seconds. Check out the batch process if you need to process a lot of URLs at once.
• Daily Limit – There is no daily limit at this time.
• Monthly Limit – Depends on what the account limit is. If there is a monthly limit set for an API key, then that will be applied.

Getting Started