How many jumps between 301 redirects is acceptable?

[pbrothers24]

For example, I have a page A that should be redirected to page D, but instead A redirects to B, B redirects to C and C redirects to D. It's something I came across and wondering if its worth the dev time to change it.

Thanks!

[pbrothers24]

Fantastic! Thank you!

[AlanMosley]

The answer is one.

Alhouth I have seen Matt Cutts (Google) state they follow more then one, each hop including the first leaks juice, he also stated they do not keep following but did not give a number

Bing states one.

http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-redirection-response-results-in-another-redirection

http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-unnecessary-redirects

[john4math]

301 redirect chains are bad.  If it's important to you to get the link juice to get from page A to page D, you should change it to just one redirect from A --> D.  Matt Cutts talked to Rand about it on a whiteboard Friday http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more:

Is It a Bad Idea to Chain Redirects (e.g. 301-->301-->301)?

"It is, yeah."

Matt was very clear that Google can and usually will deal with one or two redirects in a series, but three is pushing it and anything beyond that probably won't be followed.  He also reiterated that 302s should only be used for temporary redirects...but you already knew that, right?