How to Find Redirect Chains on Your Site

A redirect chain is when URL A redirects to URL B, which redirects to URL C (or beyond). Every hop adds latency, wastes crawl budget, and can dilute link equity. One chain is a nuisance. Hundreds of them — common after migrations — are an SEO and performance problem.

Here is how to find every redirect chain on your site.

Why Redirect Chains Matter

Before hunting for chains, understand what they cost you:

Method 1: Crawl Your Site

A site crawler is the most thorough way to discover redirect chains. It follows every internal link, maps the redirect graph, and flags chains automatically.

Using Screaming Frog

Using Command Line Crawlers

If you prefer the terminal:

# Quick check for chains in a sitemap
curl -s "https://example.com/sitemap.xml" | \
  grep -oP '<loc>\K[^<]+' | \
  while read url; do
    count=$(curl -sIL -o /dev/null -w "%{num_redirects}" "$url")
    if [ "$count" -gt 1 ]; then
      echo "CHAIN ($count hops): $url"
    fi
  done

This extracts every URL from your sitemap and checks for chains. Any URL with more than one redirect hop is flagged.

Method 2: Google Search Console

Search Console tells you what Google sees when it crawls your site.

Method 3: Server Logs

Your server logs contain every redirect that actually happened in production. No sampling, no delays — just reality.

# Find URLs that triggered redirects (Apache/Nginx combined log format)
awk '$9 ~ /^3[0-9][0-9]$/ {print $7, $9}' access.log | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -50

This shows your most frequently redirected URLs with their status codes. High-traffic redirect chains are your top priority — they affect the most users.

Detecting Chains from Logs

Chains are harder to spot in raw logs because each hop is a separate log entry. Look for patterns:

# Find URLs that redirect to URLs that also redirect
awk '$9 ~ /^3[0-9][0-9]$/ {print $7}' access.log | sort -u > redirected_urls.txt

# Check if destinations are also redirecting
while read url; do
  dest=$(curl -sI "https://example.com$url" | grep -i "^location:" | awk '{print $2}' | tr -d '\r')
  if curl -sI "$dest" | grep -qi "^location:"; then
    echo "CHAIN: $url -> $dest -> ..."
  fi
done < redirected_urls.txt

Method 4: Check Your Redirect Rules Directly

Sometimes the fastest way to find chains is to read your redirect configuration:

Apache .htaccess

# Look for rules that redirect to URLs that are also redirected
# This creates a chain:
Redirect 301 /old-page /middle-page
Redirect 301 /middle-page /new-page

# Fix by redirecting directly:
Redirect 301 /old-page /new-page
Redirect 301 /middle-page /new-page

Nginx

# Chain — /old redirects to /middle, which redirects to /new
location = /old { return 301 /middle; }
location = /middle { return 301 /new; }

# Fix — both point directly to /new
location = /old { return 301 /new; }
location = /middle { return 301 /new; }

How to Fix Redirect Chains

Once you have found your chains, the fix is straightforward: flatten them.

How Many Chains Are Too Many?

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Find the chains, flatten the chains, verify the fix. Your crawl budget and your users will thank you.