A redirect chain adds latency and leaks crawl signals. Point each legacy URL directly at the final destination, use 301 or 308 for permanent moves, and keep the map in source control. Audit with curl -IL and update internal links so chains stop growing.
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Run curl -IL on a sample of legacy URLs and record each Location header. A chain is present when more than one 3xx appears before the 200.
Check: The audit output contains the full hop list for every sampled legacy URL.
Rewrite rules to point at the final target
Replace intermediate hops with a direct rule to the final URL. Use 301 or 308 for permanent moves. Exclude destination paths from broad pattern rules to prevent loops.
Check: curl -IL your production domain/legacy-url shows exactly one 301 or 308 followed by 200.
Update internal links to the destination General best practice
Find internal links that still point at redirected URLs and update the href to the final target. This prevents the chain from reappearing after the next edit.
Check: A site crawl reports zero internal links whose target returns a 3xx.
<goal>
breadcrumb signal serp cluster cluster heading locale redirect measure report caching sitemap locale anchor.
</goal>
<context>
markup signal markup template target link cluster locale heading crawl report serp crawler payload.
</context>
<discover_first>
page index report target target image heading measure link caching payload snippet intent pipeline.
</discover_first>
<constraints>
template pipeline verify anchor anchor heading metadata snippet link markup page layout audit audit.
</constraints>
<plan>
priority content route measure content link effort crawler template redirect heading effort report query.
</plan>
<verify>
content cluster markup layout link payload target index audit breadcrumb query locale link render.
</verify>
<report>
crawler measure anchor schema priority snippet crawl crawl content page redirect link signal effort.
</report>
Get the prompt for your agent
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Verify indexing with URL Inspection — URL Inspection shows the indexed version Google holds for one URL: crawl time, selected canonical, status code and blocked resources.
Canonicalize duplicate URLs — Duplicate URLs split signals across protocol, host, slash and parameter variants.
Make JavaScript content crawlable — Google renders JavaScript, but rendering costs time and AI retrieval systems often read raw HTML.