Redirect Error (Google Search Console)

What’s actually happening

In the Page indexing report, URLs pile up under "Redirect error." This isn't the benign "Page with redirect" — it means Googlebot started following a redirect and gave up before landing on a real page. The URL never gets indexed because Google never reached indexable content. Run the URL through URL Inspection and you'll typically see it can't determine a final destination. The cause is almost always a loop, a chain that runs too long, or a redirect target that's broken or gated.

Common causes

• A redirect loop — A points to B points back to A (the server-side twin of ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS).
• A redirect chain longer than Google will follow — Googlebot tracks up to about 10 hops in a chain, and a chain past that gets flagged here.
• The redirect Location header is empty, malformed, or points at a relative path that resolves to nowhere.
• The final destination returns a 4xx/5xx (a 301 to a 404, or to a page that 500s).
• The target requires login — Googlebot hits an auth wall instead of content, so the redirect resolves to something it can't index.

How to fix it

1. Inspect the URL and follow the hopsOpen URL Inspection in Search Console for an affected URL, then reproduce locally with `curl -IL https://example.com/url`. curl prints the full hop list and the final status. A repeating pair = loop; a 4xx/5xx at the end = broken target; a long stack of 301s = over-length chain.
2. Break the loop or shorten the chainIf it loops, find the two rules pointing at each other (often an SSL-mode mismatch or contradictory www rules) and remove one. If it's a long chain, repoint the first redirect straight at the final live URL so it resolves in a single hop.
3. Make the destination return 200The endpoint of the redirect must be a real, public, 200-OK page. Fix a 301-to-404 by pointing the redirect at a page that actually exists, and make sure the target isn't behind a login or IP block that Googlebot can't pass.
4. Fix empty or relative Location headersConfirm each redirect sends an absolute, well-formed Location (`https://example.com/new`, not a blank value or a relative `/new` that resolves wrong behind a proxy). A malformed Location header alone produces this error.
5. Validate the fix and recrawlOnce `curl -IL` shows a clean path to a 200, click Validate Fix on the Redirect error issue. Google re-crawls the batch; the report clears over days to weeks as each URL reprocesses.