Robert_Charlton - 1:12 am on Feb 26, 2013 (gmt 0)

...chain(s) of ten pages...

deadsea - Ingenious experiment, but I don't think it will work. It assumes that your numbers will stay relevant to what you're trying to measure, and, IMO, that's not likely to be the case.

Something Matt Cutts said a while ago (yes, that guy again) makes me believe that when you have too long a chain, you will start getting more discontinuities from sequential redirects than you will from a chain of links.

For Matt's original comments, see this video, which is a good accompaniment to this thread anyway.

Is there a limit to how many 301 (Permanent) redirects I can do on a site?
Matt Cutts - Aug 4, 2011
trt 4:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA [youtube.com]

Here's my paraphrasing of what Matt says...

Matt discourages chained redirects.... If you can do it in one hop, that's ideal. Google is willing to follow multiple hops... but if you start getting up into 4 or 5 range, that's a little bit dangerous, since Google might decide not to follow all those redirects. Keep it down to 1 or 2 or maybe 3.

Though Matt was talking about redirects within a site, my guess is that the number of sequential redirects you want to test would still produce glitchy results. "Google might decide not to follow" suggests that in this range, Googlebot behavior is probably going to be inconsistent.

More discussion on this thread...

Is there a limit to how many 301 (Permanent) redirects I can do on a site?
Matt Cutts - Aug 4, 2011
trt 4:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA [youtube.com]

Also, fwiw, note that Matt discusses two possible meanings of "how many"....

Is there a limit to how many 301 (Permanent) redirects I can do on a site? How about how many redirects I can chain together?

I'm only talking about chained redirects right now.