Redirect Chain
A sequence of multiple redirects between the original URL and the final destination, which wastes crawl budget and dilutes link equity.
Definition
A redirect chain occurs when a URL (A) redirects to an intermediate URL (B) which then redirects to the final destination (C), creating a chain of two or more hops. Chains can extend to five, ten, or more redirects in poorly maintained sites. Each hop in a redirect chain introduces latency, wastes crawl budget, and dilutes the link equity being passed to the final destination.
Google's crawlers follow redirect chains, but the crawl budget spent on intermediate redirect hops is budget that could have been spent crawling actual content. Additionally, while Google has stated that PageRank passes through 301 redirects, there is evidence of progressive link equity loss with each additional hop in a chain. For users, redirect chains add measurable page load latency at each hop — particularly damaging on mobile connections.
Redirect chains accumulate naturally over time: a site migrates from HTTP to HTTPS (one redirect), then changes URL structure (second redirect), then rebrands (third redirect). The fix is to update all redirect rules so they point directly from the original URL to the final destination (A → C, bypassing B). A redirect checker tool traces the full redirect path for any URL, allowing you to identify and collapse chains across your site.