<b>Q: My redirects work, but they go through 2-3 hops. Does that matter?</b>

<b>Q: My redirects work, but they go through 2-3 hops. Does that matter?</b>

Short answer: each extra hop is a small tax — worth flattening, not worth losing sleep.

Long answer: A 'chain' is when URL A redirects to B, which redirects to C. Every hop adds latency for users and one more thing for crawlers to follow. Google will follow a few hops, but it's stingy: documented behavior is roughly up to 5 hops in one crawl pass before it gives up and tries again later, which slows reindexing. Chains usually sneak in when you stack migrations — an old HTTP-to-HTTPS rule, then a www rule, then a domain change, each adding a link.

The goal is one hop: old URL straight to the final live URL.

Next step: crawl your site, export the redirect report, and find any chain of 2+. Rewrite those rules to point directly at the final destination. You usually fix dozens in one config edit.