Redirect Chains: How to Find and Fix Them

A redirect chain is A → B → C when the link should have been A → C. Each hop is a round trip, a chance for a loop, and a place for caching to lie.

Loops (A → B → A) are worse: the browser gives up, the crawler wastes budget, users see an error that is not a 404.

Why they appear

• HTTP → HTTPS → www → trailing slash → finally the article.
• CMS “moved” a post twice.
• A plugin 302s everything because someone was scared of 301.
• CDN and origin both rewrite the host.

Find

Look at the final URL and the hop list, not only “it opened.” Advanced Broken Links Search records the chain on each checked URL. Filter to redirects. If you see three hops on a nav item, flatten it.

Desktop crawlers are fine for bulk. For the page you are staring at, the extension is faster.

Fix

1. Change the original href to the final URL. That is the real fix.
2. Keep one 301 from the old public URL if it has backlinks — not a daisy chain of historical aliases.
3. 301 for permanent. 302 for “this is temporarily elsewhere.” Using 302 for a domain migration is how you stay temporary forever. See also SEO of dead links.
4. Canonical tags are not a substitute for fixing hrefs.

How many hops is “too many”

One hop is normal (HTTP to HTTPS). Two is sloppy. Three-plus on internal nav is a bug. There is no Google-published “max hops before death,” only users and crawlers that stop bothering.

Flatten the chain. Point the link where you meant. Recheck that one row.