Checks
Redirect chains
Checks that a page is reached through at most 2 redirect hops, since each additional hop wastes crawl budget and slows down the visitor waiting for the final page.
What this check looks for
This check reads the redirect chain the crawler followed to reach the final page. More than 2 hops warns, reporting the full chain from the first URL requested through to the final destination. Zero, one, or two hops passes — zero hops (served directly, no redirect at all) is reported distinctly as the cleanest case.
Why it matters
Every redirect hop adds a full network round-trip before the browser or crawler even starts loading the actual page, so a long chain directly delays Time to First Byte and every metric downstream of it, including the Core Web Vitals search engines weigh. Search engine crawlers also follow a limited number of redirect hops before giving up, so a long enough chain risks the destination page never getting indexed at all, not just being indexed slowly. AI crawlers operating under similar time and hop budgets face the same risk — a page buried behind three or four redirects may simply time out before an assistant crawler ever reaches the real content.
How to fix it
Collapse the chain so links and redirects point directly at the final URL:
# Chain (3 hops) — each redirect adds a round-trip
/old-url -> /old-url-2 -> /new-url-draft -> /new-url
# Fixed: single hop straight to the final URL
/old-url -> /new-urlUpdate the source link or redirect rule to target the final destination directly rather than letting it cascade through intermediate URLs left over from past migrations.
See how your site scores on this check