Redirect chains: what they are and how to fix them

What a redirect chain looks like

Here a single old link takes three redirects to reach the page:

http://example.com/pricing       301 →
https://example.com/pricing      301 →
https://www.example.com/pricing  301 →
https://www.example.com/pricing/ 200

Each line is a separate request the browser, or Googlebot, has to make. The fix is for the first URL to redirect straight to https://www.example.com/pricing/.

Why they matter

• Speed. Every hop is another round trip before the page starts to load, which is especially slow on mobile connections.
• Crawl budget. Search engines spend a request on every hop. On a large site, chains mean fewer real pages crawled.
• A hard limit. Google follows up to 10 redirects. After that it gives up, and the destination isn't reached at all.
• Fragility. The longer the chain, the more likely one hop breaks, ends in a 404, or loops back on itself.

One redirect from an old URL to its new home is normal and costs very little. The goal is one hop, not zero.

How chains build up

• Several rules applied in turn: HTTP to HTTPS, then adding www, then adding a trailing slash, each as its own redirect.
• Repeated migrations: a page moved in 2021 and moved again in 2024, with the old redirect pointed at the 2021 URL.
• Plugins and platforms adding their own redirect on top of the server's.
• Internal links still pointing at old URLs, so every visit starts at the top of the chain.

Redirect loops

A loop is a chain that comes back to a URL it has already visited, such as A to B and back to A. Browsers stop with "too many redirects", and search engines can't reach the page at all. Loops usually come from two rules that disagree, for example one forcing a trailing slash and another removing it.

How to find them

Browsers follow redirects silently, so you need a tool that records each hop. Paste your URLs, or a list exported from your sitemap or analytics, into a bulk redirect checker:

Filter the results by Chains. Good lists to check are:

• the old URLs from your last site migration;
• the URLs in your sitemap, which should never redirect;
• your most-linked pages, from Search Console's Links report.

How to fix them

1. Note the final URL of each chain: the one that returns 200.
2. Point the first redirect straight at it. In your server config, CMS or redirect plugin, change the target of the original rule.
3. Combine canonical rules into one. If HTTPS, www and trailing-slash redirects run separately, replace them with a single rule that goes straight to the canonical form.
4. Update internal links, canonical tags and your sitemap to use final URLs, so most visits never redirect at all.
5. Check again to confirm every URL now resolves in one hop.

Questions