.htaccess, can I redirect a redirect?

[T-G]

Hi, some time ago I set up a .htaccess file directing an OLD PAGE which no longer existed, to NEW PAGE.

Now the NEW PAGE it was directed to is also gone, so I want to redirect the NEW PAGE to a NEWER PAGE!

Not sure how to handle this, the first line of the .htaccessfile says

redirect PAGE A to PAGE B

(then the next line says)

redirect PAGE B to PAGE C

Can I do this?

[wige]

You can do that, and most search engines will follow 301 redirects up to 3 deep. (at least Google and Yahoo claim they will)

HOWEVER

It is a bad idea. The more redirects you have, the more likely browsers and spiders are to time out, and the more problems you may encounter when troubleshooting issues.

I would change the first redirect so that both versions are redirecting to page C. The search engines will eventually catch up with the change.

[luigip]

Hi T-G
As wige mentioned don't take a detour: Redirect A to C.
If you still have deeplinks to A, the linkjuice will also be better transfered to C.

[seosean]

I agree with all that was said but I also wanted to add that if you redirect in .htaccess like that sometime you'll get a redirecting circle (when you redirect to this that redirects to that) and it confuses the browser and you end up with an error message page. So just test your redirects out.