Avoid multi-hop redirect chains

Redirect chains waste crawl budget, reduce PageRank flow to destination pages, and add latency that harms user experience—Googlebot may abandon long chains entirely, leaving destination pages undiscovered.

Quick Reference

• A redirect chain is A→B→C — Googlebot may stop following after 5 hops
• Each hop loses PageRank and adds page load latency
• Flatten chains by pointing A directly to C with a single 301
• Audit after every URL migration to catch newly created chains

Check

Follow all redirect rules configured on the site. Identify any URL where the redirect target itself also redirects (chain of 2+ hops). Report the full chain (URL A → URL B → URL C → final), the number of hops, and the HTTP response code at each step.

Fix

For each redirect chain, update the first redirect to point directly to the final destination URL. Example: if A→B→C, update A's redirect to point directly to C, eliminating the B hop. Verify the chain is gone by following the URL and confirming a single 301 or 302 followed by a 200.