Redirect analysis

The Redirects tab traces every redirect chain the crawler encounters, flags loops and long chains, and shows the full hop-by-hop path from the originally requested URL to the final destination. Use it to find the redirects that waste crawl budget, add latency, or prevent a page from loading at all.

Stats

The header row shows four counts and two summary indicators drawn from the current crawl data:

Stat	What it measures
Pages with redirects	The number of crawled URLs whose initial request returned a 3xx response code and resolved through at least one redirect before reaching a final destination.
Pages with issues	The subset of redirecting URLs where the chain contains a loop, exceeds the hop threshold, or uses a redirect type that warrants attention.
Redirect loops	Chains where a URL appears more than once, creating a cycle the browser cannot resolve. Each distinct loop is counted once.
Long chains (4+ hops)	Chains that require four or more intermediate responses before arriving at the final URL. The threshold of four hops marks the point where latency and crawl-budget cost become significant.

Below the counts, a health bar displays the redirect health percentage: the proportion of redirecting URLs whose chains resolved cleanly, with no loops, no long chains, and no flagged redirect types. A site where every redirect resolves in one or two hops with a permanent status code shows 100%.

The average redirect hops figure beside the health bar gives a single number for how many intermediate responses a typical redirect chain involves. A value near 1.0 means most redirects resolve in a single hop. Values above 2.0 suggest chains worth investigating.

Chain visualization

The main table lists every URL that triggered a redirect. Rows can be sorted using the segmented control at the top of the table:

By severity — critical issues (loops) first, then warnings (long chains), then notices (temporary redirects that could be permanent).
By hop count — longest chains first, making it easy to find the worst offenders.

Each row is expandable. Opening a row reveals the full redirect chain as a step-by-step visualization. Every hop in the chain shows:

Field	Description
Status code	The HTTP response code for that hop: `301`, `302`, `307`, `308`, or the final response code at the end of the chain.
Redirect type	A human-readable label for the status: `301 Permanent`, `302 Found`, `307 Temporary`, or `308 Permanent`.
URL	The full URL that this hop redirects to. The final entry in the chain shows the destination URL and its response code (typically `200`).
Response time	The time the server took to return the redirect response for that individual hop, in milliseconds. The sum of all hop times is the total latency the redirect chain adds.

The chain visualization draws a connecting line between hops, with each status code colour-coded: permanent redirects in the default text colour, temporary redirects highlighted, and the final destination marked distinctly. Loops are shown with an arrow returning to the repeated URL.

Issues

Three categories of redirect issues are detected, each assigned a severity level that determines its sort position and visual treatment:

Issue	Severity	What it means
Redirect loop	Critical	A URL in the chain points back to a URL already visited in the same chain. The browser will give up after a fixed number of attempts, and the page will not load. Search engines treat looping URLs as unreachable.
Long chain (4+ hops)	Warning	The chain requires four or more redirects to reach the destination. Each hop adds a full round-trip of latency and consumes a unit of crawl budget. Search engine crawlers may abandon long chains before reaching the final URL.
Temporary redirect used where permanent is appropriate	Notice	A `302` or `307` redirect is used on a chain that has been stable across crawls. Temporary redirects signal to search engines that the original URL should remain indexed, and they do not consolidate link equity to the destination as reliably as a `301` or `308`.

Each issue links to the corresponding rule in the rules reference, where you can read the full rationale and see configuration options such as adjusting the hop threshold.

Why redirects matter

A single-hop permanent redirect is a normal and well-handled part of the web. The problems begin when redirects stack, loop, or use the wrong status code:

Crawl budget

Every hop in a redirect chain is a separate request a search engine crawler must make. On a large site, hundreds of multi-hop chains can consume a meaningful share of the crawl budget, leaving fewer resources for the pages that actually need indexing.

Latency

Each redirect adds a full network round-trip before the browser can begin loading the destination page. A three-hop chain through servers in different regions can add several hundred milliseconds of delay that the user experiences as a blank screen.

Loops

A redirect loop prevents the page from loading entirely. Browsers detect the cycle and display an error. Search engines drop the URL from the index. A loop on a high-value page — a homepage, a product category, a landing page with inbound links — is a critical finding.

Link equity

Permanent redirects (301 and 308) signal to search engines that the destination is the canonical location and should inherit the ranking signals of the original URL. Temporary redirects (302 and 307) do not make the same signal — the search engine may continue to index the original URL and may not consolidate link equity to the destination. Using a temporary redirect for a permanent move risks splitting ranking signals between two URLs indefinitely.