Multiple redirects a problem?

[KentH]

When product is sold out I will 301 redirect to a category page if a similar product is not available, but now our web developer has changed all the url's of the category pages so I need to redirect them all to the new category pages but that means there are some products that are first being redirected to the no longer existent category and then being redirected again to the new category page.

This seems like it might me be a problem having two 301 redirects so I wanted to find out for sure if it is. Unfortunately our system for redirecting pages is archaic so it will be difficult and time consuming to go back and redo all the redirects that are going to pages that no longer exist so I wanted to get some additional opinions before I do that.

[KentH]

Thanks for posting the video that was exactly what I needed 

[john4math]

Here's Matt Cutts take on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA.

He says Googlebot will follow 301 redirect chains.  Once you get to 4 or 5 in a row... he says Googlebot might bow out.  He recommends 1 or 2, or maybe 3 in a row.

So based on what he said, you should be completely safe doing 2 redirects.

[MRCSearch]

Passing through multiple 301s is not the best solution, but it works. I've never seen it generate problems of any substance, even on some huge sites.

Worst I've ever seen was 4 passthroughs, old versions of multiple pages (date-sensitive) being 301's to new versions for 4 years. I didn't set it up that way, just inherited it. Didn't see any serious loss of juice.

Of course optimal would be to have everything 301ing to the right place. And depending how you're 301ing (.htaccess, IIS) might be as easy as doing a find/replace to get it all in line.