redirect loop
Also called: redirect loops, infinite redirect loop, ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS
A redirect loop is a misconfiguration where two or more URLs redirect to each other in an endless cycle, so no request ever lands on a real page. Browsers show ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS, and Google flags the URL as a "Redirect error" and leaves it out of the index.
A redirect loop is not the same as a redirect chain. A chain hops through several URLs but can still end on a live page. A loop never resolves, because each hop points back to a URL already in the path.
How loops happen
Most loops come from two redirect rules that each think they own the URL. Classic example: one rule forces https:// while another forces http://, or the www and non-www versions each redirect to the other. Trailing-slash rules, a CMS canonical plugin fighting a server .htaccess rule, or a CDN edge rule stacked on top of an origin rule all produce the same circular behavior.
Google’s crawlers follow up to 10 redirect hops by default. Past that, or as soon as a URL points back to one already in the chain, Googlebot stops and records a Redirect error. The content on every intermediate hop is ignored, so a looped URL never returns its 200 response, never gets rendered, and never gets indexed. Search Console lists the exact triggers under Page indexing: a chain that is too long, a loop, a redirect URL that exceeds the max length, or a bad or empty URL in the chain.
Diagnose it fast with curl -sIL https://example.com/page to print every hop, or watch the Network tab in Chrome DevTools. Then fix at the source: pick one canonical host plus protocol, remove the conflicting rule, and point every redirect straight at the final 200 URL in a single hop.
How it affects your traffic
A looped URL is invisible to search: it falls out of the index, loses whatever rankings and links it held, and any internal links pointing at it drain crawl budget into a dead end. When a loop lands in a template (a category path, a locale switch, a login redirect), it can silently pull dozens or hundreds of pages out of search at once. Our Technical SEO service traces every redirect chain, flattens it to a single hop, and clears the Redirect errors from Search Console so those pages can be crawled and indexed again.
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