What is a Redirect chain?
http://example.com/old 301 → https://example.com/old https://example.com/old 301 → https://www.example.com/old https://www.example.com/old 301 → https://www.example.com/new (200 OK)
Each rule added on its own.
Chains rarely come from one decision. A site moves to HTTPS, later adds www, later renames a section, and each change adds a redirect on top of the last. A request for a very old URL then passes through every rule in turn.
Short links, trackers and ad networks can add hops as well. One hop is normal for a short link, but it combines with whatever the destination site does.
What each extra hop costs.
Slower pages
Every hop is a full network round trip before anything loads.
Crawlers give up
Googlebot follows a limited number of hops, up to 10, and may stop before the destination.
Less reliable
A long chain has more places to fail, and a loop never ends.
Harder to debug
It is not obvious where a link went wrong.
Make every old URL go straight to the end.
Find the chain
Run the URL through the redirect checker to see every hop.
Point to the final URL
Change the first redirect so it sends visitors directly to the last address.
Update internal links
Make your own links, sitemaps and canonicals use the final URL, so they don't redirect at all.
Common questions
How many redirects are too many? +
Aim for one at most. More than two or three is worth fixing, and Googlebot follows up to ten hops.
What is a redirect loop? +
A chain that returns to a URL it already visited, so it never reaches a page. Browsers stop with a "too many redirects" error.
Does a short link count as a redirect in the chain? +
Yes. A short link is one hop. That is acceptable, but make sure the destination doesn't add several more.
How do I see my chain? +
Paste the URL into the redirect checker, which lists every hop with its status code and timing.