Redirect chains and circular links
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2025 10:25 am
Setting up redirects from one page to another is often useful, but if done incorrectly it can seriously harm the user experience and your rankings.
If one redirect leads to another redirect, it creates a chain, and sometimes that chain ends up looping on itself. Long redirect chains and infinite loops can slow down your site and confuse search bots.
It’s best to link directly to the destination page, but if you need to redirect, link directly to the final page. Understanding the reasons behind redirect issues will help you identify patterns and fix them.
Usually, redirect issues pop up when external web pages are involved.
For internal pages, chains and loops were largely caused by ecuador mobile database previous migrations of the site.
Temporary redirect
Temporary redirect
To users, there is no difference between a temporary 302 redirect and a permanent 301 redirect, but to search robots, a temporary redirect indicates that both the old and new pages should be indexed because the original page will be restored.
As the name 302 redirect implies, it is a temporary measure for special circumstances and should be removed at some point.
If you have a temporary redirect for no reason, you should change it to a permanent redirect or destination page URL.
Permanent redirect
Permanent redirect
Permanent redirects seem like a reasonable final solution; they pass the original page's PageRank while asking search engines to remove it from their index.
If one redirect leads to another redirect, it creates a chain, and sometimes that chain ends up looping on itself. Long redirect chains and infinite loops can slow down your site and confuse search bots.
It’s best to link directly to the destination page, but if you need to redirect, link directly to the final page. Understanding the reasons behind redirect issues will help you identify patterns and fix them.
Usually, redirect issues pop up when external web pages are involved.
For internal pages, chains and loops were largely caused by ecuador mobile database previous migrations of the site.
Temporary redirect
Temporary redirect
To users, there is no difference between a temporary 302 redirect and a permanent 301 redirect, but to search robots, a temporary redirect indicates that both the old and new pages should be indexed because the original page will be restored.
As the name 302 redirect implies, it is a temporary measure for special circumstances and should be removed at some point.
If you have a temporary redirect for no reason, you should change it to a permanent redirect or destination page URL.
Permanent redirect
Permanent redirect
Permanent redirects seem like a reasonable final solution; they pass the original page's PageRank while asking search engines to remove it from their index.