Guides · Shopify redirects

Why Shopify ignores your redirect when the old URL still loads

You add a redirect in Shopify, open the old address, and the old page still shows. Nothing is broken. Shopify is doing what it is built to do.

The rule

Shopify applies a URL redirect only when the requested address would otherwise return a 404. If something still lives at the "Redirect from" path, Shopify serves that page and never looks at the redirect.

So a redirect from /pages/faq to /pages/help does nothing while a page with the handle faq exists. The row sits in your redirect list and looks fine. It will not fire.

Where this bites during a migration

• Handles that survived the move. You imported products with the same handles they had before, then also imported a redirect for each old product URL. Every one of those rows points away from a page that exists.
• Pages rebuilt under the old name. Someone recreated /pages/about on the new store. The redirect to /pages/our-story is now dead.
• Collections that share a path with the old site. The old site used /collections/sale too, and the plan was to send it somewhere else.
• Redirects written before the content existed. The file was correct on the day it was made. Content added later moved in on top of the sources.

How to find these rows

You need two lists: the "Redirect from" column of your redirect file, and every address that is live on the new store. The store's sitemap.xml is the quickest source for the second list. A product or collection export works too, since each handle gives you a path.

Any source that appears in the live list is a redirect that will not fire. In a spreadsheet, put the live paths in one column and use a lookup against the "Redirect from" column. Normalise first: strip the domain, ignore a trailing slash, and compare without regard to capitals, or you will miss matches.

How to fix them

There are only two real choices for each row.

1. The live page should stay. Delete the redirect row. It was never going to run, and leaving it in makes the list harder to trust.
2. The redirect should win. The page at that address has to go: delete it, or change its handle so the old path is free. Once the path returns a 404, the redirect starts working.

Do not try to solve it by adding a second redirect. A redirect cannot override a live page, however many you add.

Check before launch, and again after

Run the comparison once the new store's content is in place, because that is when the live list is real. Run it again after any bulk import of products or pages. New content can land on a path that a redirect was relying on.