Q: What's the difference between a redirect chain and a redirect loop, and which is worse?

Q: What's the difference between a redirect chain and a redirect loop, and which is worse?

Good to untangle these — people mix them up.

Short answer: a chain is slow and leaky; a loop is fatal. Fix loops first.

Long answer: a chain is A to B to C — each hop works, but bots may stop following after a few, and a little ranking signal leaks at every step. A loop is A to B to A — the browser bounces forever and the user gets an error page. A loop means zero access; a chain just means degraded access.

Common loop cause: an http-to-https rule plus a www rule that disagree about order, so they keep handing the request back and forth.

Next step: run your key URLs through a redirect checker (httpstatus.io or curl -IL). Kill any loop today. Then flatten chains so every old URL points directly to its final destination in one hop.