Redirect loop: what it is and how to fix it
What it is
Two URLs redirect to each other, so the page never loads at all.
Why it matters to a client
A looping URL is a dead end for visitors and for Google. Anyone who clicks that link — from search, an email or an ad — sees an error instead of your page.
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
Find the two rules that point at each other (usually a trailing-slash or www rule fighting an HTTPS rule) and keep only one. Test the URL in a private window afterwards.
- 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 critical 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 critical-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.