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Shopify Redirects: They Only Fire on a 404

By StoreKitly

Shopify redirects only fire when the old URL returns a 404. Handle changes, bulk CSV import, paths you can't redirect, and why market redirection is different.

Shopify redirects send anyone who visits an old address to a new one, but only when the old address is broken. Shopify Help puts it plainly: “You can redirect only from broken URLs,” and “If the URL still loads a valid webpage, then the URL redirect won’t work.” So when a redirect seems dead, check first whether the old page still exists.

This page is for merchants who are deleting products, renaming collections, or moving a store to Shopify and want old links to land somewhere useful. Every rule below comes from Shopify Help’s URL redirects page or Shopify’s developer docs, checked on October 8, 2026.

Shopify URL redirect rules (per Shopify Help, checked 2026-10-08): Create them in Content > Menus > URL redirects. A redirect works only from a broken URL, one that shows “Page not found” or 404; if the old URL still loads a page, nothing happens. Redirects start working immediately. The target can be a relative URL inside your primary domain or a full URL outside it. A store can have up to 100,000 URL redirects, or 20,000,000 on Plus. Some paths can’t be redirected, including /products, /collections, /collections/all, collection tag URLs, and paths starting with /apps, /cart, /orders, or /shop. Changing a collection or page handle creates a redirect only if the redirect option is selected when you save.

A ROAD CLOSED sign above an orange DETOUR arrow on snowy construction barricades

A redirect is the detour sign, and it only matters once the road is closed: Shopify fires a URL redirect only when the old address returns a 404. If the old page still loads, visitors never see the detour.

The 404 rule

Help defines a broken URL as one that displays an error such as “Page not found” or 404, on the page or in the page title. A URL redirect is a fallback for that error. It never overrides a live page.

That explains several common surprises:

  • The old page is still live. If the old URL returns a real page, the redirect is skipped. Help says you can set a product to Draft or remove it from all sales channels so its URL returns a 404 and becomes eligible for a redirect.
  • You made a seasonal collection visible again and the redirect vanished. Help’s example hides /collections/fall and redirects it to /collections/summer. When you set the fall collection back to Visible, Help says the redirect is automatically deleted, because redirects only work for URLs that return 404 errors. You have to recreate it the next time you hide the collection.
  • You deleted a redirect and it still fires. Help’s caching note says 301 redirects are cached by browsers and search engines, so a removed redirect can keep working for people who already followed it until the cache expires.

When a redirect isn’t working, Help’s troubleshooting order is short: check both fields for typos, make sure the Redirect from URL doesn’t have an active page, make sure it isn’t a fixed path or a blocked prefix, then clear the browser cache or try another device.

Changing a handle doesn’t always create a redirect

A handle is the last part of the URL, such as blue-linen-shirt in /products/blue-linen-shirt. Change it and the old URL becomes a 404. Whether a redirect replaces it depends on an option at save time. The sitemap file updates on its own. The redirect is a separate job.

  • Collections. In the collection’s Search engine listing, Help’s desktop steps say: “Select whether to create a redirect from the old URL to the new URL.” The mobile steps name the option Create a URL redirect from the previous handle. Help adds that this sends people who click the old URL to the new one “instead of landing on a 404 ‘page not found’ page.” Tick it before you save.
  • Pages. Help’s pages guide says that if you change a page’s web address, “you have a pre-selected option to Create a URL redirect.” Pre-selected means you can still untick it.
  • Products. Help’s product steps let you change the URL handle in Search engine listing but don’t mention a redirect option. If your admin shows one when you edit the handle, keep it selected. Either way, open the old URL after saving; if it shows a 404, add the redirect yourself.
  • Apps and imports. In Shopify’s developer API, both product and collection updates have a redirectNewHandle setting: “If true, then the old handle is redirected to the new one automatically.” For collections the default is false; the product input doesn’t state a default, so an app or script should set the flag explicitly.

Help also warns against changing a product handle often, or “the product might not display in search engine results.” If you’re tempted to change a handle because you rewrote the product title, the Shopify product title SEO post explains which title field does what; the handle can usually stay.

For collections, Shopify collection SEO covers when renaming a collection is worth it in the first place.

Paths you can’t redirect

Help lists several groups of URLs that a redirect can’t come from:

Can’t redirect Help’s note
Paths starting /apps, /application, /cart, /carts, /orders, /services, /shop Prefixes you can’t redirect
Fixed paths /products, /collections, /collections/all, plus reserved /collections/vendors, /collections/types, /a/, /community/, and /tools/ Fixed Shopify paths and reserved paths
Collection tag URLs like /collections/shirts/linen Help says the path is “still considered valid” even if no product has that tag
A .html URL to the same URL without .html Shopify treats them as the same URL

Two more limits are softer. Help says URLs with query strings “might not work as expected” with redirects, and URL redirects aren’t supported on customer account menus.

Where a redirect can point

Help says redirects start working immediately. Its rule for the Redirect to field: use a relative URL, such as /collections/shirts, to stay inside your primary domain, and a full URL, such as https://www.example.com/collections/shirts, to send people elsewhere. To send someone to the home page, enter /.

You can also use Liquid in both fields, but Help notes that full field validation can’t be performed when you do. Test those by hand.

Shopify bulk redirects: import, export, edit, delete

Under Content > Menus > URL redirects, Help covers four bulk tools:

  • Import. Click Import, add a CSV file, upload it, review the import, then click Import redirects. Help links a sample file to use as a template. Its two columns are Redirect from and Redirect to, with a sample row sending /example_product.php to /products/example-product.
  • Export. Click Export, choose which redirects to export, pick the CSV type, then Export URL redirects.
  • Edit in bulk. Select several redirects and click Edit redirect. Help’s bulk actions page says the Bulk edit feature isn’t compatible with URL redirects, so for large changes, export, edit the CSV, and re-import. Help doesn’t say whether an import replaces a redirect with the same old path, so test a few rows first.
  • Delete in bulk. Select them and click Delete selected redirects, then confirm.

On limits, the only number Help gives is store-wide: 100,000 URL redirects, or 20,000,000 on the Plus plan. Help’s import steps don’t state a row limit or file size for the redirect CSV, so if you’re importing a large file, try a short test file first and check a few rows on the storefront. Help also suggests a third-party app if you need to create a large number of redirects.

One error message is easy to misread. Help says a “Redirect Limit Exceeded” error from the Admin API isn’t about your 100,000 cap. It means a request is causing too many server redirects.

Export before you bulk-delete. A redirect file is cheap insurance against deleting the wrong filter’s worth of rows.

Three common jobs

A deleted product. This is Help’s own example: delete the product, then redirect its URL to a similar product. If there’s no similar product, we’d pick the collection it belonged to over the home page, because the visitor still sees related products.

A renamed collection. Select the redirect option when you save the new handle, then open the old URL to confirm. Links you typed into menus, descriptions, or blog posts still point at the old address until you edit them; the redirect only catches the visits.

A move to Shopify. Help’s migration guide says Shopify’s link structure is likely different from your old platform’s. Its example: a shipping policy at example.com/policies/shipping-policy might become example.com/pages/shipping-policy. Help’s advice:

  1. Set up URL redirects before you transfer the domain, for pages customers may have bookmarked or other sites link to.
  2. Use a CSV import for the full list.
  3. After launch, enter each original URL in a browser and confirm it lands on the target, starting with your most-visited pages.

Before importing, drop rows from fixed paths such as /collections/all (they can’t be redirected), and test rows with query strings, which Help says might not work as expected.

Market subfolders and automatic redirection

Help’s redirect page says two things about market or language subfolders. Its “Redirects and subfolders” section says a redirect applies to all subfolders, with an example where one redirect from a deleted product covers both example.com and example.com/en-ca. Its list of additional limitations says redirects “don’t automatically apply to all market subfolders” and that you must create individual redirects for each one (its example redirects an /en-ca/ page to an /en-fr/ page). Until Help settles it, test each important redirect in a subfolder: open example.com/en-ca/ plus the old path and see whether it 404s or redirects. If it 404s, add a separate redirect for that subfolder.

Automatic storefront redirection is a different feature. It lives in Online Store > Preferences under Automatic redirection. Per Help’s automatic redirection page:

  • Country/region redirection detects a customer’s location and sends them to their market’s domain, subdomain, or subfolder. On a shared domain it changes content such as currency and language instead.
  • Language redirection switches to the customer’s browser language when that language is added, assigned, translated, and published.
  • Customers from the EU on an EU country-code domain (for example .de or .fr) aren’t automatically redirected, to comply with local legislation.

It’s a storefront setting, not a list of old-to-new URLs, and it doesn’t fix a broken old URL. If a product page 404s, automatic redirection won’t help; a URL redirect will.

FAQ

Is a Shopify redirect a 301?

Help’s URL redirects page calls them 301 redirects in its caching note, which says browsers and search engines cache them. Shopify’s API docs describe a redirect as sending a visitor from a path to a target without stating a status code.

Why isn’t my Shopify URL redirect working?

Start with the old URL: if it still loads a page, the redirect won’t fire. Check that it returns a 404, isn’t a fixed path such as /collections/all, and isn’t a collection tag URL. Then clear your browser cache.

How many redirects can a Shopify store have?

100,000, or 20,000,000 on the Plus plan, per Help.

Sources