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Discoverability

How to fix long redirect chains

Each hop is a round trip before anything renders, and search engines pass less signal through a chain than through a single redirect — some give up after five. Chains build up over time from stacked rules; pointing the first URL straight at the final one removes them.

What 13x checks

This is rule discoverability.redirect-chains in the public registry: No long redirect chains. It runs on every audit, against the pages we actually fetched, and its result is derived from the response rather than estimated.

Surface
Discoverability
Score weight
4 of the readiness score
Scope
Reported as skipped when the page renders only with JavaScript
Applies
To every site

Registry version 2026-07-30. Every rule is published, and the audit is deterministic — the same page produces the same finding every time.

The fix

The same text the audit hands you when this check fails on your own site.

Some internal links redirect more than once. Point them directly at the final destination.

Chains accumulate from stacked rules — http→https, then non-www→www, then an old path→new path — each added at a different time:

Configuration
http://example.com/old  →  https://example.com/old  →  https://www.example.com/old  →  https://www.example.com/new

Two fixes:

1. Update the links in your markup to the final URL. Internal links should never rely on a redirect. 2. Collapse the server rules so one redirect handles scheme, host and path together.

Each hop is a full round trip before anything renders, and search engines pass less signal through a chain — some stop following after five.

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