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Warning Technical SEO

Redirect chain

Severity
Warning
Impact
Medium
Effort to fix
Low
Issue code
redirect_chain

Why it matters

The redirect target redirects again. Chains slow users down and can stop crawlers before the final URL.

How to fix it

Make the first redirect point straight to the final URL.

What this means

The URL redirects, and the target redirects again, before reaching a final page. The evidence shows every hop, for example 3 hops: /a to /b to /c to /d.

Example

http://example.com/shoes redirects to https://example.com/shoes, which redirects to https://www.example.com/shoes, which redirects to https://www.example.com/shoes/. That is three hops where one would do.

Why it matters

  • Each hop adds a round trip, slowing the page for visitors, especially on mobile.
  • Googlebot follows up to 10 hops and then gives up. Long chains risk the final page never being reached.
  • Signals can weaken or get lost along long chains, and they are harder to maintain.

Common causes

Chains build up across migrations: HTTP to HTTPS, then non-www to www, then a trailing slash rule, then a URL restructure, each added as a separate rule on top of the last.

How to fix it

  1. Find the final URL in the evidence.
  2. Change the first redirect so it points straight to the final URL. Where several rules are involved, combine them into one rule that applies all changes at once.
  3. Update internal links, canonical tags and the XML sitemap to use the final URL, so most visitors never hit a redirect at all.
  4. Keep the old redirects working for outside links, just pointing directly at the destination.

A chain that returns to its start is a redirect loop and is critical.

Verify the fix

Recrawl. Fixed URLs show a single hop and move to Redirecting URL, which is the expected state for old addresses.

How it affects your score

Finding this issue on any page costs the Technical SEO score 3 points, plus up to 12 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. Weakens rankings, crawling or measurement. Fix after critical issues.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick Redirect chain. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (medium) and effort (low), and in the issues CSV under the code redirect_chain. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.