Cleaning redirect chains that bleed crawl, step by step

Cleaning redirect chains that bleed crawl, step by step

Every hop in a redirect chain is a separate fetch Googlebot has to make. Multiply across thousands of URLs and it adds up. Clean them:

— Crawl your site and export all 3xx responses with their full hop paths.
— Flag any chain longer than one hop (A→B→C).
— Rewrite the source to point directly at the final destination (A→C).
— Fix internal links pointing at redirected URLs — link to the final URL, not the redirect.
— Re-scan to confirm zero chains remain, then watch 3xx share drop in Crawl Stats.

Actually Google follows up to ~10 hops, but each one is a wasted request and a delay — and old internal links pointing at redirects are why chains regrow.

Link to the destination, not the detour. Chains are self-inflicted and they come back if you don't fix the source links.