Redirect chain

How chains accumulate

• HTTP → HTTPS migration redirects all URLs
• Non-www → www canonical redirects
• Trailing slash normalization redirects
• Subsequent URL restructure redirects each previously-redirected URL to a new destination
• Result: http://example.com/old-path → https://example.com/old-path → https://www.example.com/old-path → https://www.example.com/new-path

Each historical migration adds another hop unless you collapse the chain.

Why they hurt

• Crawl budget — each hop is a separate HTTP request the crawler must make
• User performance — every hop is a round-trip on slow connections
• Link equity — slightly diluted on each hop (less than the old “15% loss” myth but still meaningful)
• Cache invalidation — CDN-level caching gets less efficient
• Mobile networks — chains are disproportionately costly on high-latency cellular

How to find them

• Screaming Frog → Redirects tab → “Chain length > 1”
• Ahrefs Site Audit → Internal redirects report
• curl manually: curl -I -L https://example.com/old-path and count Location headers

How to fix

1. Inventory all chains across the site
2. For each chain, identify the final destination
3. Update the first redirect to point directly to the final destination
4. Repeat until all chains are single-hop
5. Update internal links to point to the final URL (no redirect needed)
6. Document the redirect map so future migrations don’t recreate chains

Major migrations should always include a chain audit as the last step before launch.