link.hop_cap_exceeded
The redirect chain didn't reach a final response within 10 hops.
What it looks at#
The redirect-chain walker follows HTTP redirect status codes (301, 302, 303, 307, 308) up
to a fixed cap of 10 hops. If the chain hasn’t reached a final, non-redirect response by
then, this fires and the walk stops there (data.chain.truncated: true). Ten is
deliberately tighter than common defaults — curl’s own default cap is 50, and most browsers
allow around 20.
Why it matters#
An unusually long redirect chain is a common cloaking technique: each additional hop is another opportunity to branch the destination based on referrer, user-agent, or requester IP, so the same link can lead different visitors to different places. It’s also just sometimes a genuine redirect loop or sloppy chain — this check doesn’t distinguish intent, only the fact that the destination couldn’t be confirmed within the cap.
What to do#
Medium severity. The real signal here is “we don’t actually know where this leads” — treat it that way rather than as a confirmed-bad verdict.