Shopify redirects: when you need them and how to set them up

What are Shopify redirects?

Shopify redirects are rules that send a visitor from an address that no longer works to one that does. Each URL redirect has two parts: Redirect from, the old path, and Redirect to, the page that replaced it. Shopify’s guide to creating and managing URL redirects describes them as a way to redirect traffic from one web page to another.

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect: it tells browsers and search engines that a page has moved for good. Google’s documentation on how HTTP status codes affect its crawlers calls a 301 a strong signal that the redirect target should be processed. A 302, the temporary kind, is only a weak one, and Google’s redirects guide says a temporary redirect keeps showing the source page in search results.

Shopify’s help center treats its redirects as 301s. It warns that 301 redirects are cached by browsers and search engines. A redirect you delete can keep working in a shopper’s browser until the cache expires.

Why do redirects matter for a store that wants Google traffic?

Because every visit from Google lands on one specific URL. Change that URL without a redirect and the next user who clicks the result gets a Page not found screen. Google’s crawling documentation says URLs that return a 4xx status code, such as a 404, are removed from the index.

That is how a product page that took months to rank disappears: a handle gets edited, an item gets deleted, the store moves platforms.

It feels as if Google turned on the store. It did not. A store should not lose Google traffic it already earned because an address changed.

Here is what those addresses can carry. On one direct to consumer store on Shopify, Google search (not paid) brought 1,720 visits, 24 orders and $8,316 in sales in the 90 days before September 3, 2026. Source: Shopify’s sales attribution report.

That report credits each order to the visit it came from, so it misses buyers an ad introduced who later searched Google. It is one store, and the full case study shows the before and after with its caveats. Redirects protect rankings a store already has; earning new ones is the wider job of ecommerce SEO.

When does a store need a Shopify URL redirect?

A store needs a Shopify URL redirect whenever an address that people or Google already use stops working. The common triggers:

• You change a URL handle. The handle is the last part of the address, such as blue-wool-scarf at the end of a product URL.
• You delete a product, page or collection that still gets visits or links, and a real replacement exists.
• You merge two collections or pages into one.
• You move to Shopify from another platform. Shopify’s migration guide warns that its link structure for individual pages is likely different from your previous service.
• A printed card, an email or another site sends a user to an address you have since changed.

A platform move changes almost every address, because Shopify puts content in fixed subdirectories such as /products, /collections and /pages. Its domains terminology page is blunt: you can’t edit subdirectory names.

Does Shopify create redirects automatically?

For some changes, yes. When you edit the web address of a page or a blog, Shopify’s help center says a Create a URL redirect option is pre-selected. The previous web address then redirects to the new one (creating and editing pages).

Shopify’s product API has the same idea built in. Its redirectNewHandle setting, when true, redirects the old handle to the new one automatically. Domains are handled too: when you change your primary domain, Shopify says your other domains, including your-store-name.myshopify.com, redirect to the new primary domain.

Deleted items are not. Shopify’s product guide says a deleted product is permanently removed and can’t be restored, so its address points nowhere until someone adds a redirect.

Whenever you change a handle, open the redirect list and confirm the previous path is there.

Should you change handles at all?

Only for a good reason. The same Shopify guide warns not to edit a handle too often, or the product might not display in search engine results.

“I wouldn't recommend constantly changing URLs.”

John Mueller, Search Relations Lead, Google, December 2022 Google SEO office hours

A redirect saves the traffic, but it is not instant. Google’s site move guide says that for a medium-sized site, it can take a few weeks or more for Google to start showing the new URL instead of the previous one. If the goal is a better search listing, change the page title and meta description in the Search engine listing section and leave the handle alone.

How do you create a URL redirect in Shopify?

Each redirect is a short form in the Shopify admin:

1. From your Shopify admin, go to Content, then Menus.
2. Click View URL redirects.
3. Click Create URL redirect.
4. In Redirect from, enter the old path, starting with a slash.
5. In Redirect to, enter the new path, or a full URL for another domain. To send the visitor to your home page, enter /.
6. Click Save redirect, then open the address you redirected from in a private browser window to test it.

Shopify says URL redirects start working immediately.

Use a relative path, starting with a slash, for pages on your own store. Shopify’s help center puts the rule this way: use a relative URL within your primary domain, and a full URL to redirect outside it. An absolute URL, one that starts with https://, is only needed for another domain.

Two details from the developer side are useful. Shopify’s Redirect resource documentation says the target can be any path on the store or an external URL. It also says a full URL given as the path is saved as an absolute path without the domain: https://your-store.com/pages/about-us is stored as /pages/about-us.

How do you add Shopify redirects in bulk?

Use a CSV file. On the URL redirects screen, Shopify offers a sample URL redirect CSV file to use as a template.

Fill it with one row per redirect. Click Import, then Add file, choose the CSV, click Upload file, review the import and click Import redirects. The same screen exports your current list, which is worth doing before any big change.

As of September 2026, Shopify’s URL redirect guide allows a maximum of 100,000 URL redirects per store, or 20,000,000 on the Plus plan. A store with a few hundred items will never come close.

Can you automate redirects with Shopify Flow?

Yes. Shopify Flow’s Create redirect URL action creates a redirect when a product is deleted, sending visitors to a page with more information on discontinued items. Its Overwrite existing redirect option replaces a redirect that already exists for that address.

Shopify notes the workflow might not work if the product had a customized handle before it was deleted.

Use it with care. Google’s site move guide warns that redirecting many URLs to one irrelevant page can confuse the user. It might also be treated as a soft 404 error, which means Google treats the destination as a missing page.

What about the Admin API?

Developers and apps create redirects through Shopify’s Admin API. Shopify marks the REST Admin API as a legacy API as of October 1, 2024. New public apps must be built with the GraphQL Admin API from April 1, 2025.

There, the UrlRedirect object is created with urlRedirectCreate. Its path field is the address the user visits before being redirected to the target location.

Shopify out of stock SEO: redirect, keep or remove the page?

Keep the page if the item is coming back, redirect it only to a genuine replacement, and let it go if there is none. That is the short version of what Google Search and Merchant Center both say.

For stock that is coming back, keep the page. Google’s guide to temporarily pausing an online business says it’s better to still allow that page, and mark it out of stock. In Shopify, a tracked item is out of stock when its inventory level is at zero or below, and by default customers can’t buy it.

If you take preorders, the Continue selling when out of stock setting in the Inventory section keeps the page selling.

Redirecting sold-out items is where stores go wrong. Merchant Center’s rules on generic or dysfunctional landing pages name it as a problem. Their example: the product is out of stock and the website redirects to the homepage or a similar products page.

The availability attribute in your feed must also match what the landing page shows.

“Just don't blindly redirect to a similar page, a category page, or your homepage.”

John Mueller, Search Relations Lead, Google, August 2024 Google SEO office hours

The test is whether a shopper who wanted the missing item would be glad to land on the new page.

In the same answer, he calls a genuine replacement fine to redirect to and says 404s wouldn’t affect the rest of a site’s rankings. The blind version, he says, is a terrible user experience.

What happens when you archive, hide or delete an item?

Shopify’s redirect guide explains the mechanism with a collection: once hidden, its URL becomes a 404 page, which allows the redirect to work. The same applies to an item set to draft or removed from all sales channels. Make it visible again and the redirect is deleted automatically, because redirects only work for URLs that return 404 errors.

An archived product is hidden from your storefront. An unlisted product keeps its page but can be reached only by its direct URL, and Shopify’s product status definitions say it is hidden from internet search and the store’s sitemap.

Why is my Shopify redirect not working?

Usually because the old address still loads something. Shopify URL redirects redirect only from broken URLs, the ones that show Page not found or 404.

Shopify’s help center is plain about it: if the URL still loads a valid webpage, the URL redirect won’t work. Hide the page first (for an item, switch it to draft or remove it from all sales channels), check both fields for typos, then test again.

Shopify’s troubleshooting section adds two more rules. You can’t redirect URLs that use collection tag filtering. And a redirect works inside each language or market subfolder: in Shopify’s example, a visitor to the /en-ca/ version of the old address lands on the /en-ca/ version of the new one.

Sending one locale to a different one, such as /en-ca/ to /en-fr/, takes its own redirect for each subfolder.

Is automatic storefront redirection the same thing?

No. Automatic storefront redirection is a Markets setting: it shows each customer the storefront that matches their location preferences and can switch the language to match their browser. It moves people between versions of pages that exist, and it does not fix a broken URL.

Can you redirect a live page, like the homepage, to a product?

Not with Shopify’s URL redirects, because they only fire on broken URLs, and your homepage always loads. The workarounds live in theme code that runs in the user’s browser, and Google treats them as second best.

Google’s redirects guide says to only use JavaScript redirects if you can’t do server-side or meta refresh redirects. The reason: Google might never see a JavaScript redirect if rendering fails.

Most of the time the better answer is not a redirect at all. A user who arrives on the homepage should see the product first, so feature it at the top and link to it from the main menu. Keep the homepage as the page that ranks for your store’s name.

How many redirects are too many?

For Google, the count barely matters. The problem is chains, not totals.

“you can have as many redirects as you like on your site overall”

Gary Illyes, Search Advocate, Google, December 2022 Google SEO office hours

His caveat is the part that catches Shopify stores: keep the hops in each chain low.

A redirect chain is one redirect pointing to another. Two renames later, /collections/scarves might go to /collections/wool-scarves and then to /collections/winter-scarves.

Google’s crawlers follow up to 10 redirect hops. Google’s site move guide still advises redirecting to the final destination directly: ideally no more than 3 and fewer than 5. Merchant Center is stricter, asking that a landing page URL have no more than 2 redirects.

The fix takes seconds. When you rename something a second time, edit the first redirect so it points straight at the newest URL. That keeps every product URL in your Google Shopping feed and your free listings one hop from the page.

How do you move to Shopify without losing Google traffic?

Map every old address to its closest new page, load the map before the domain moves, and keep it for at least a year. Google’s site move guide calls the first step preparing a URL mapping. Shopify’s migration guide says to set up URL redirects in advance for any pages your customers might have bookmarked.

1. List the URLs worth keeping. Search Console is the best source: pull every page with clicks from its Performance report, and every page other sites link to from its Links report (the Top linked pages table).
2. Match each one to the closest page on the new store: product to product, category to collection, article to article. For example, https://your-store.com/shop/blue-scarf.html becomes /products/blue-wool-scarf.
3. Import the map as a CSV in Shopify before you point the domain at the new store.
4. Update internal links and submit the new sitemap, so Google finds the new URLs directly. Here is where to find and submit your Shopify sitemap.
5. Watch, and keep the redirects. Check Search Console weekly for the first month. Google’s advice is to keep redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year.

“The redirects you mentioned are critical in forwarding signals across versions”

John Mueller, Search Relations Lead, Google, June 2024 Google SEO office hours

He was answering a store owner whose search traffic fell after a move to Shopify.

His larger point holds: redirects are necessary but not sufficient, because new pages, headings and internal links change the site too.

Expect a wobble. Google says the visibility of your content in Search may fluctuate temporarily during a move. A small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move.

If the domain changes as well, submit a Change of Address in Search Console for the old site. Google’s systems can remember former URLs for a long time, one more reason to leave the redirects in place.

How do you change your Shopify domain without losing SEO?

Keep the previous domain connected to the store, make the new one primary, and tell Google with the Change of Address tool. Shopify redirects the store’s other domains to the primary one, so product, collection and page addresses carry across without a redirect list.

If your store has ranked for years, the worry is fair. To Google, a new domain is a site move, and its guide says visibility can fluctuate for a while as the move settles.

1. Connect the new domain and make it primary. In Settings, then Domains, click the domain, choose Change domain type and select Primary domain. Shopify’s guide to changing your primary domain says your other domains then redirect to it. On live stores checked on September 18, 2026, those redirects were 301s that kept the path, so a product address on one domain landed on the same product address on the primary.
2. Test the previous addresses. Open the former homepage, a product and a collection. Google’s Change of Address help asks for a 301 from the previous homepage to the new one, and recommends 301s for the other main pages.
3. Submit the Change of Address in Search Console. You must own both properties with the same Google account, and the move should be filed for every version of the previous domain, www and non-www included. The tool checks for 301s on a few pages first.
4. Keep the previous domain. Leave it connected so the redirects keep working, and keep paying for it: Google recommends at least a year, so no one else can buy it and use it.
5. Change one thing at a time. Google’s site move guide says to move the domain first and change the layout later. Its Change of Address help adds that a move combined with new content and a new URL structure will probably cost some traffic while Google reassesses the pages.

Moving to a new Shopify store: which one holds the redirects?

The new store, once the domain moves there. For a domain bought elsewhere, start the connect flow in the new store and verify that you own it, as the guide to moving a third-party domain between stores explains; once verified, it is removed from the original store automatically. A domain bought through Shopify moves with Transfer to another Shopify store, and Shopify says to do that before you deactivate the original store.

Make the moved domain primary and matching addresses simply keep working. If the new store has a domain of its own, the moved one redirects to it with each path intact. Either way, only items whose handles changed need URL redirects in the new store, and the original store no longer answers for the domain, so it does not have to stay open for the redirects.

How do you check that your Shopify redirects work?

Test the old addresses yourself, then let Search Console confirm it at scale.

• Click test. Open each retired address in a private window, the way a new user would see it. It should land on the new URL in one step.
• Status check. A browser’s developer tools or any HTTP header checker should show a redirect status such as 301 on the first address, then 200 on the new page.
• A 307 from http to https. If you type http:// and your browser shows a 307, look closer before worrying. Shopify keeps HSTS active on every connected domain, and HSTS tells a browser to upgrade http to https by itself, so that step happens inside the browser. A header checker asks the server directly: on live stores checked on September 18, 2026, Shopify answered http with a 301.
• Search Console’s Page indexing report. Google’s report lists redirected addresses under Page with redirect, which is normal. Not found (404) lists addresses to review, and Redirect error flags a chain that was too long or a loop.
• Merchant Center. A Product page unavailable issue can mean a landing page redirects too many times or returns a 404.

Crawlers in the Shopify SEO tools worth paying for can list every broken link on the store in one pass. Rewriting pages is the moment redirects get forgotten, so run the check after any round of product page optimization.

A redirect list only proves that addresses resolve. It does not show whether Google traffic turned into orders. That is what the free Traffic to Sales Check reads: Shopify, Google and email side by side, to find where visits and sales leak.

What did a redirect check find on a real store?

Mostly good news, and one thing a theme change broke. A read-only audit of one store on September 19, 2026 checked the addresses that should redirect. The http version, the www version and the myshopify.com address all answered with a 301 to the store’s primary domain.

Two retired URLs each answered with a correct 301. One old page returned a 404, and nothing links to it, so it was left alone: that is the “Gone for good, no visits, no links” row in the table above.

The regression came two days earlier. On September 17, the store’s developer switched themes, and the release review caught four side effects by crawling all 45 sitemap URLs before the switch and again after: a title suffix on every page, a doubled Article schema, an orphaned blog and lost variant weights.

The orphaned blog is the redirect lesson. An orphan is a page nothing links to anymore. It still loads, so no redirect fires, and no redirect would help: the fix is a link.

What this does not prove: it is one store, and a clean redirect list says nothing about how much traffic those addresses carried. The habit is the transferable part.

Export the sitemap URLs, fetch each one and record its status code, title and schema. Change the theme. Fetch them again and compare.

What do clean Shopify redirects look like on a healthy store?

Every address that ever earned a click still takes the shopper somewhere useful. Redirected pages sit in Search Console as Page with redirect, not 404, and Merchant Center finds a working page for every listing.

Pages keep their rankings through a rename, and a platform move carries its redirects across on day one. Shopify redirects are one small part of the Get Found stage of The Traffic to Sales Method: your product pages and collections showing on Google without paying for ads.

If you would rather have the redirects mapped, imported and checked for you, that is part of Shopify SEO, done for you. Left alone, every changed URL quietly hands back traffic the store already earned.

Does this sound like your store?

If it does, the service that fixes it is Shopify SEO, done for you. You can see the before and after on one store in the case study.

Rather hand it to a Shopify SEO expert? Shopify SEO services. On one store, a month of sales from Google went from $354 to $5,418 in about 90 days. I work remotely with Shopify stores across the US.