01 The Rule
Maximum redirect chain depth is 2 hops. Every redirect must resolve to a 200 status page within 2 hops. Monitor for new chains after every deployment and migration.
Redirect Chain Management
Last updated: 2025-12-01
02 Rationale
Redirect chains are the silent killer of crawl budget at scale. A site with 500K redirect chains averaging 3 hops wastes 1M crawl slots. After multiple migrations, chains accumulate — A→B (migration 1) then B→C (migration 2) creates A→B→C that nobody notices until crawl efficiency degrades.
03 Implementation
- Maintain a redirect map that flattens all chains to single hops
- Run chain detection after every URL migration or restructure
- Monitor server logs for redirect-heavy crawl patterns
- Set up alerts for new redirect chains exceeding 2 hops
- Clean up legacy redirects from previous migrations
04 Common Violations & Consequences
Violation
Chains of 3+ hops accumulated across migrations
Consequence
Compounding crawl waste; link equity decay of ~15% per hop
Violation
Redirects pointing to other redirects after a migration
Consequence
Chain length grows with each migration; eventual crawler abandonment
Violation
No monitoring for new chains
Consequence
Chains accumulate silently; crawl efficiency degrades gradually
05 The Fix
Run the 301 Chain Detector tool to identify all chains. Flatten to single-hop 301s. Implement chain monitoring in your deployment pipeline.