Key Takeaways
- A 301 redirect tells Google a URL has permanently moved — use this for almost all Shopify redirects
- Set up redirects before you delete a product or change a URL handle, not after
- Redirect to the most relevant live page, not the homepage
- Redirect chains (A→B→C) should be flattened to direct redirects (A→C)
- Too many low-quality redirects can dilute your crawl budget
Shopify’s URL redirect system is one of its most useful SEO tools — and one of the most misunderstood. Merchants either ignore it entirely (leading to hundreds of broken links) or use it incorrectly (creating redirect chains that confuse Googlebot).
This guide covers exactly when to use redirects, how to set them up correctly, and what to avoid.
What a URL Redirect Does
When someone requests a URL that no longer exists, your server normally returns a 404 (not found) response. A redirect changes that behavior: instead of a 404, the server returns a redirect response that sends the visitor to a different URL.
From an SEO perspective, what matters is the type of redirect:
301 (Permanent redirect): Tells search engines this URL has permanently moved. Google will update its index to reflect the new URL, and approximately 90% of the link authority from the old URL is transferred to the new one. This is what you want for virtually all Shopify redirects.
302 (Temporary redirect): Tells search engines this is a temporary move. Google keeps the old URL in its index and doesn’t transfer authority. Use this only for genuinely temporary situations (A/B tests, temporary out-of-stock redirects you plan to revert).
Shopify’s built-in URL redirect system creates 301 redirects by default, which is correct.
When to Set Up a Redirect
Before Deleting a Product
This is the most important and most commonly skipped redirect scenario. Before you delete any product, ask:
- Has this product been live long enough to accumulate any inbound links?
- Have you linked to this product from your blog posts or other content?
- Is this product in your sitemap and indexed by Google?
If the answer to any of these is yes, set up a redirect before deleting. The redirect should go to the most similar live product, or the parent collection if no direct replacement exists.
The process: set up the redirect → delete the product. If you delete first, you’ve already created a 404, and any crawl between the deletion and when you add the redirect represents lost authority.
When Changing a Product URL Handle
If you update a product’s URL handle in Shopify (say, changing /products/jacket to /products/mens-leather-jacket), Shopify automatically creates a redirect from the old URL to the new one. This is useful for the product page URL itself.
However, Shopify’s automatic redirect doesn’t update internal links in your content. Any blog posts, product descriptions, or pages that link to the old URL using the old handle still contain broken links — even though the product page redirects correctly.
Best practice: before changing a handle, update internal links first. After changing the handle, the automatic redirect acts as a backup for any links you missed or for external links.
When Deleting or Merging Collections
When you delete a collection or merge it into another, set up a redirect from the old collection URL to the new one. Collection pages are often linked from navigation, blog content, and external sources. Without a redirect, all those links break.
When Unpublishing Old Pages
Blog posts and pages that you unpublish or delete may have accumulated links and ranking signals over time. Setting up redirects from old blog posts to newer, more comprehensive versions of the same topic is a good practice for content consolidation.
After Theme Migrations
If you switch Shopify themes, audit your store for any URLs that may have changed. Some theme-specific pages or custom sections use URLs that don’t survive migrations. A post-migration link scan helps surface these quickly.
How to Set Up Redirects in Shopify
Single Redirect
- In Shopify Admin, go to Online Store → Navigation
- Click URL Redirects
- Click Add URL redirect
- In “Redirect from,” enter the old URL (start with
/, e.g.,/products/old-name) - In “Redirect to,” enter the new URL (e.g.,
/products/new-name) - Click Save redirect
Important: The “Redirect from” URL must start with a forward slash and must not currently have a live page at that address. If a live page exists at that URL, Shopify will prioritize the page over the redirect.
Bulk Redirect Import
For multiple redirects — after a large product deletion, a collection restructure, or a site migration — use Shopify’s CSV import feature:
- Create a CSV file with two columns: “Redirect from” and “Redirect to”
- Include your redirects, one per row
- In URL Redirects, click Import
- Upload the CSV and review the import before confirming
This is significantly faster than entering redirects one by one for large-scale changes.
Choosing the Right Redirect Destination
The destination matters as much as the redirect itself. Sending a redirected URL to a poor destination wastes the preserved authority.
Best destinations (in order of preference):
-
Direct replacement page — if a product was replaced by a newer version, redirect to that product. This preserves topical relevance and provides a good user experience.
-
Parent collection — if no direct replacement exists, redirect to the collection the product was in. Visitors see similar products and Googlebot understands the topical relationship.
-
Category page — if the collection was also deleted, redirect to the most relevant remaining category.
-
Homepage — only as a last resort. A homepage redirect from a deleted product page sends almost no topical signal and provides a poor user experience for visitors who clicked a specific product link.
Avoid:
- Redirecting to irrelevant pages just to avoid a 404
- Redirecting everything to the homepage
- Redirecting to pages that are themselves being redirected (chains)
Redirect Chains: The Hidden Problem
A redirect chain occurs when following one redirect leads to another redirect before reaching the final destination.
Example chain:
/products/jacket-v1 → /products/jacket-v2 → /products/jacket-v3
This is common on Shopify when products go through multiple handle changes. Each time Shopify auto-creates a redirect, it redirects to the current handle. When that changes again, a chain forms.
Why chains are a problem:
- Each hop adds latency — page load is slower
- A small amount of link authority is lost at each hop
- If a chain has more than 3–4 hops, Googlebot may stop following it
How to fix chains: In your URL Redirects list, find entries that redirect to a URL that itself has a redirect. Update the first redirect to point directly to the final destination, skipping the intermediate steps.
You can identify chains by exporting your URL redirects as a CSV and looking for “Redirect to” values that also appear in your “Redirect from” column.
How Many Redirects Is Too Many?
There’s no hard limit, but there are practical considerations:
For small stores (under 100 products): Even 50–100 redirects are unlikely to cause problems. Set up redirects freely for any deleted product or changed URL.
For large stores (500+ products): A large redirect list can marginally slow down Shopify’s server response time as it checks each request against the redirect table. More importantly, a redirect list full of old, irrelevant redirects (e.g., from products deleted three years ago) adds noise.
Best practice for large stores: Periodically review your redirect list and remove redirects for URLs that have been gone for several years and have no external inbound links. You can check inbound links in Google Search Console (Links report) before removing a redirect.
Redirects vs Fixing Source Links
Redirects are not always the best fix for every broken link situation. When a broken link exists inside content you control (a product description, blog post, or page), updating the link directly is often better:
- No redirect hop — full authority passes directly
- Cleaner URL structure
- Redirect list stays leaner
Think of redirects as the right tool for:
- Broken links you can’t fix at the source (external sites linking to you)
- Large-scale changes where updating source links one by one would take too long
- Situations where you’re unsure of all the places an old URL was linked
And source link updates as the right tool for:
- Internal links in your own content
- Situations where you have a small, known list of broken links to fix
Relink identifies broken links in your Shopify store and suggests the right fix for each — whether that’s a redirect or a source link update. Install free.