- Class
- C2 Recommended
- Weight
- 4
- Severity on fail
- major
- Applies to
Test this rule on a live site with the redirect checker. Free, no account needed.
Scope and evidence
Evaluated on redirect units. The book marks this requirement DOCUMENTED RECOMMENDATION, SEARCH-ENGINE-SPECIFIC.
Fail conditions
Each condition has a stable code and a reason template. The evaluator fills the placeholders from observed values only; no sentence in a report is generated.
multi_hop{source} reaches {final} after {hops} redirects ({chain}). Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops, but Google advises redirecting to the final destination directly.
The documented fix
When saving a redirect, rewrite existing rules that point at its source so every source points at the final URL.
Sources, quoted
These are the passages the rule rests on, stored once in the knowledge base and emitted exactly as written. A citation marked for specific conditions appears only on findings with those codes.
“While Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops in a "chain" of multiple redirects (for example, Page 1 > Page 2 > Page 3), we advise redirecting to the final destination directly.”
[G-SITEMOVE] Site moves with URL changes · Avoid chaining redirects · last updated 2026-08-20
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/site-move-with-url-changes