Three redirects before the page loads
October 25, 2026
Type twilio.com into a browser and the server answers four times: a redirect to https, a redirect to www, a redirect to the English page, then the page. We ran the same request against 30 SaaS homepages on 12 September 2026. Sixteen of them take two hops to reach the homepage, Twilio takes three, and Zapier answers in one.
Google's crawlers follow up to ten redirect hops by default (Google Search Central), so a chain of three still resolves. Each hop costs a request, and a chain grows every time a URL changes and the new redirect points at an old redirect instead of the final page. The 301 redirect entry explains what the status code does. Keep your rankings when URLs change shows how BeeRanked writes one redirect, to the final page, whenever a URL changes.
Transcript
0:00 we checked 30 SaaS sites
0:00 Type twilio.com. The server answers four times.
0:00 $ curl -sIL http://twilio.com/ | grep -iE "^HTTP|^location"
0:00 Location: https://twilio.com:443/
0:00 location: https://www.twilio.com:443/
0:00 location: https://www.twilio.com/en-us
0:00 Three redirects, then the page.
0:00 This is where you finally land.
0:00 16 of 30 take two hops to reach the homepage
0:00 Google has a limit for this.
0:00 "By default, Google's crawlers follow up to 10 redirect hops." Google Search Central
0:00 $ curl -sIL http://zapier.com/ | grep -iE "^HTTP|^location"
0:00 Location: https://zapier.com/
0:00 Zapier does it in one.
0:00 Every old URL you change adds a hop.
0:00 Change a URL, get the redirect. One hop, written for you.
0:00 beeranked.online/content/docs/keep-your-rankings-when-urls-change