Not Here, Go There: Analyzing Redirection Patterns on the Web
Kritika Garg, Sawood Alam, Dietrich Ayala, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson

TL;DR
This study analyzes 11 million web URI redirects to understand their patterns, success rates, and implications for usability, SEO, and security, revealing prevalent practices, common issues, and potential risks in web redirection behavior.
Contribution
It provides a large-scale analysis of web URI redirection patterns, highlighting common practices, errors, and implications for web management and preservation.
Findings
50% of URIs terminated successfully
0.06% exceeded 10 hops in redirection chains
Prevalence of canonical redirects like HTTP to HTTPS
Abstract
URI redirections are integral to web management, supporting structural changes, SEO optimization, and security. However, their complexities affect usability, SEO performance, and digital preservation. This study analyzed 11 million unique redirecting URIs, following redirections up to 10 hops per URI, to uncover patterns and implications of redirection practices. Our findings revealed that 50% of the URIs terminated successfully, while 50% resulted in errors, including 0.06% exceeding 10 hops. Canonical redirects, such as HTTP to HTTPS transitions, were prevalent, reflecting adherence to SEO best practices. Non-canonical redirects, often involving domain or path changes, highlighted significant web migrations, rebranding, and security risks. Notable patterns included "sink" URIs, where multiple redirects converged, ranging from traffic consolidation by global websites to deliberate…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
