How many 301 Redirects can I do in a chain?

A question often asked in SEO is how many 301 redirects can I do in a chain without getting the Google Bot stopped following it?

Answer

• Don’t use more than 3 redirects in a redirect chain. Google Bot will not follow 301 redirects over multiple hubs.
• Using too many redirects in a chain is also bad user experience. The page speed will slow down with every redirect you use.
• Some browsers only support max. 5 redirect in a chain. This is a limit to HTTP/1.0 [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt]. Error Message "Too many redirects. Can't load site."

Tip:

Do not mix up different types of redirects. If you use 302 or 301 redirects at the same time, it will be confusing for the Google Bot.

More information

See Matt Cutts on Youtube Google Webmaster Help Channel: "Can too many redirects from a single URL have a negative effect on crawling?".