Redirect chain: what it is and how to fix it
What it is
A URL bounces through two or more redirects before it loads.
Why it matters to a client
Every extra hop adds waiting time before anyone sees the page, and search engines pass a little less credit through each one. On mobile connections a three-hop chain can cost a full second.
How to find it
Run an AuditOpti free audit, or crawl the site with any crawler and filter the results by status code. In Google Search Console, the Pages report under Indexing lists the same problems from Google's side.
How to fix it
Point each starting URL straight at its final destination in one redirect. Update internal links and menu items so they use the final URL rather than the old one.
- 1Open the Redirection plugin (or your SEO plugin's redirect tool) and search for the starting URL.
- 2Find every rule that fires for it and delete all but one, pointing that rule straight at the final destination.
- 3Check that the site is not also redirecting at the server level in .htaccess or in the host's control panel.
- 4Re-test the URL with a private window and confirm a single 301.
How AuditOpti prioritizes it
AuditOpti scores this as high severity by default, then multiplies it by how many pages are affected — one page is not the same problem as a hundred. After that, the AI re-ranks it against everything else on the site by likely business impact, so a high-severity problem on a service page can outrank a critical one on a page nobody visits.
Check a site for this
Run a free audit and we'll tell you whether this issue is present — along with everything else worth fixing.