Q: My crawl found redirect chains — how do I clean them up properly?

Q: My crawl found redirect chains — how do I clean them up properly?

This worries a lot of people, but it's very fixable. Chains aren't fatal, they just leak speed and a little authority.

Short answer: collapse every chain so each old URL points straight to the final destination.

Long answer:
— Export all redirects from your crawler with the 'redirect chain' report. You want the full hop path, not just the first hop.
— Sort by number of hops, worst first.
— For each chain A to B to C to D, rewrite rule A so it goes straight to D. Repeat for B and C.
— Watch for loops (A to B to A) — those return errors and must be fixed first.
— Re-crawl and confirm every redirect is now a single 301.

Next step: keep one hop as your hard rule going forward. Every new redirect should target a live 200 page, never another redirect.