Bash And Remote Files In If Statement

I am trying to see if a file exists on a remote server but am not getting what I expect. (This is my first Bash script).

Code:
remotefile=[url]
localfile=globaldown.sh

if [ -f "$remotefile" ]
then echo "we have the file remote"
else echo nothing to download from remote server "$remotefile"
fi

if [ -f $localfile ]
then echo we have the local file "$localfile"
else echo "no local file"
fi
it is seeing the local file but not the remote file.

I can copy and past the "echo $remotefile" into my browser and the path is correct.

also wget will fetch the remote file so it should see that it exists.