How many redirects in a chain is too many?

Google follows up to 10 hops but recommends keeping chains as short as possible. Each extra hop adds delay for users and crawlers. Aim for one redirect straight to the final page.

What causes redirect loops?

Usually two conflicting rules: for example the server redirects to www and the CDN redirects back to non-www, or one rule adds a trailing slash and another removes it.

How do I find chains across the whole site?

With a crawler (such as Screaming Frog) for all links, or a redirect checker for chosen URLs — especially old URLs after a migration and URLs in external links.

Redirect chain and redirect loop

A redirect chain is when a URL redirects to another URL, which redirects to the next, and so on before reaching the final page. A loop is a chain that returns to a URL it already visited — the page never loads. Googlebot follows at most 10 hops; ideally there should be one.

How a chain forms

A typical example after a few site changes:

http://shop.com/sofas → 301
https://shop.com/sofas → 301
https://www.shop.com/sofas → 301
https://www.shop.com/sofas/ → 200

Three redirects instead of one. Each is a separate request: slower loading for users and extra work for crawlers.

Risks of a chain

slower loading, especially on mobile,
wasted crawl budget on large sites,
beyond 10 hops Google reports a redirect error and never reaches the content,
a higher risk that one hop turns into a 302 or starts pointing somewhere wrong.

Risks of a loop

A loop (/a → /b → /a) means the page never loads. Browsers show a "too many redirects" error and Google won't index the URL. Loops most often appear when https or www rules are set in two places at once, such as the server and the CDN.

How to fix it

List the full chain with the redirect checker — every hop with its status code.
Set a single rule: every old URL redirects straight to the final URL.
Update internal links, canonicals and the sitemap to point to final URLs, not redirects.
For a loop, find the two conflicting rules (server, CDN, plugin) and keep one.

Monitoring

A redirect loop is a critical event — the page stops working for everyone.

IndexRise checks the status code of monitored pages every night and follows redirects. A new redirect and a loop are critical events, confirmed on the next check.