Definition

A redirect chain is a sequence of two or more HTTP redirects that a client must follow to reach the final URL — for example, A → B → C rather than A → C directly.

Google's documentation says Googlebot follows up to ten redirect hops in a chain before giving up on a URL. Each hop adds latency for users, can dilute or drop ranking signals, and risks breaking entirely if an intermediate redirect is later removed. The recommended fix is to flatten chains so every old URL points directly to the current destination in a single hop.

Examples

• After repeated site migrations

  URL `/old-blog/post` redirects to `/blog/post`, which then redirects to `/articles/post`. Replacing the first redirect's target with `/articles/post` collapses the chain into a single hop and removes the unnecessary intermediate request.

Sources

• Google Search Central — Redirects and Google Search

Related terms

• 301 Redirect
  A permanent redirect — an HTTP 301 status code telling clients and search engines that a URL has moved permanently to a new location.
• Crawl Budget
  The number of URLs a search engine crawler will fetch and the rate at which it fetches them on a given site.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit