Why Drupal sites accumulate hundreds of redirect chains

A Drupal site with many years of life, one or more migrations, or frequent content changes accumulates redirects automatically. Every alias change and every moved page leaves one behind, until there are hundreds or even thousands of them. A new project gets there too once content starts to be created, redirects added, and URLs moved.

The problem is silent. Nobody decides to create a redirect chain; chains appear when redirects pile up on top of each other over time. Reviewing them manually is unfeasible because of the time it would take, so they stay. These situations usually surface in audits run with different tools: until that moment they go unnoticed.

Redirect chains and loops cost performance, SEO, and dead pages

A redirect chain is several hops in a row: a → b → c → d. Each additional hop increases navigation latency for users and makes crawling harder for search engines. Keeping every redirect at a single hop contributes to better SEO.

Googlebot follows up to 10 hops in a chain before giving up, but …