Redirect Chain
In one line
A redirect chain is when a URL has to pass through two or more redirect hops before reaching its final destination — costing crawl budget, page speed and a slice of link equity along the way.
Going deeper
Redirect chains usually accumulate across successive site changes — 'A redirects to B redirects to C redirects to D'. Bots will follow the chain, but each extra hop costs crawl budget, slows users down and erodes a bit of link equity along the way.
Tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb and the Ahrefs site audit surface these easily. The fix is mechanical: flatten the rules so the original URL points directly to the final destination in a single hop.
Redirect loops (A to B back to A) are worse. Bots cannot index the page at all, users hit an infinite redirect error in the browser. Building a recurring post-migration check for chains and loops is a small habit that prevents a lot of pain.
Related terms
301 Redirect
A 301 redirect is the HTTP status code that says a URL has moved permanently — passing essentially all of the original page's link equity to the new URL.
SEO302 Redirect
A 302 redirect tells engines that a URL is temporarily redirected — search engines keep indexing the original URL rather than transferring signals to the destination.
SEO307 Redirect
A 307 redirect is the HTTP/1.1 temporary redirect — unlike 302, it preserves the original request method (GET, POST, etc.) instead of silently switching to GET.
SEO308 Redirect
A 308 redirect is the modern permanent redirect — same long-term meaning as 301, but it preserves the original request method instead of forcing GET.
SEOSite Migration
Site migration is any change that touches the substance of a site — domain, platform, URL structure, redesign — and historically the project where SEO equity is most at risk.