Website diagnostics
HTTP Header Checker
Use an online HTTP header checker with Web Health. Inspect response headers, status codes, cache-control directives, redirect chains, content types, and server details for any URL.
Understanding HTTP Response Headers & Status Codes
HTTP response headers govern web performance, caching strategies, content encoding, and server execution parameters. Inspecting response headers helps web developers troubleshoot 301/302 redirects, optimize CDN cache hits, and remove sensitive server banners.
Key HTTP Headers Inspected
- HTTP Status Code: 200 OK, 301 Redirect, 404 Not Found, 500 Error.
- Content-Type: MIME type definition (e.g. text/html; charset=utf-8).
- Cache-Control: Caching rules (max-age, s-maxage, no-cache, immutable).
- Content-Encoding: Compression algorithms (br, gzip, deflate).
- Server Header: Sponsoring web server software (Nginx, Apache, Cloudflare).
Header Optimization Checklist
- Enable Brotli / Gzip: Compress static text resources to decrease transfer payload size.
- Set Long Cache-Control: Cache static assets (images, JS, CSS) for 1 year with immutable.
- Eliminate Redirect Chains: Point internal links directly to final target URLs.
- Remove Server Fingerprints: Strip detailed Server and X-Powered-By versions for security.
Frequently Asked Questions
HTTP response headers are key-value pairs returned by a web server when delivering a web page or asset to a client browser. They provide metadata about the content type, server software, caching policies, encoding, security rules, and HTTP status codes.