Can duplicating products on Shopify affect URL structure and site speed?

Solstice
Visitor
2 0 1

Hi, so I have added over 200 products to my shopify store over the last couple of weeks, many by hitting the duplicate product button to save time on adding tags/price etc.  But I am only now noticing that the URL for the product stays as 'copy of *****'  instead of saying the new product description. 

 

When I go to change the URL in the search engine listing preview section while editing product, it says something about redirecting the URL.  If I change the url to the new product title for all of the products I have duplicated, will it slow down my website due to many re directions?  And is there a faster way to change all of the URLs instead of doing them all manually.


Many thanks if you can help,

 

Cheers!

Replies 13 (13)

Paul_West
Shopify Partner
250 9 68

You only really need to do a redirect if you were getting traffic to those product pages and want to preserve it. If there is practically no traffic to them there's not much point having a 301 cus no-ones going to be going to the old url.

Solstice
Visitor
2 0 1

Thanks for your reply!

 

I guess my issue is when I click a product the URL does not match up with the product title as it often says 'copy of **whatever the title of the product I copied**" instead of what the new product title is.  I can change this easily at the bottom of the edit product page but I am worried this will slow down the website.

buttons4people
Tourist
5 0 7

Hi,

I'm having the same problem, did you solve it?

thanks!

limitcracker
Excursionist
23 0 5

@Solstice 

Hi, same problem did anyone find a solution?

 

Br, John

trtstore
Tourist
7 0 3

I'm having the same problem. The urls for copied items are mismatched with the product shown. This is not good!wrongurl.jpg

EarthSoul
Visitor
1 0 0

I'm also having the same problem.  Can someone please help with this? 

tofteandlutsen
Visitor
2 0 2

I just noticed this as well, and it seems to be a bug, If I was looking at a bowl and noticed the URL said "/copy-of-drip-coffee-maker", I would think that was .. odd. 😉 I hope they fix it!

 

//edit

I went back to check for these URLs / re-do the products and just noticed one URL for a trivet that was "/raven-stovetop-kettle-tea-steeper".. so, not even anything about a copy. So strange!

shockseals
Tourist
6 0 5

I am in the same boat. The only work around I have found is deleting the products with bad URL's and creating from scratch which is NOT an option as I have loaded way too many products. The incorrect URL makes the collection populate incorrect products on the page when using the search bar.  

JØhn
Explorer
40 5 13

Hey all,

There are some much quicker ways to make these changes en-masse than going to the product pages one by one.

For products, export your products as a CSV, remove the "copy-of-" bits offline, and reimport them. https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/import-export/import-products

I don't know if this is also necessary, but delete your redirects if you don't have traffic to them. https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/legacy/menus-and-links/url-redirect#delete-many-url-... The point of the redirect is that if you have people trying to go to the old url, they get sent to the new page - but if no-one's going to the old url, no need. 

chase1717
Tourist
3 0 2

Same issue. I wish a shop support tech would comment or something. Seems like too many people having this issue with no resolution. 

 

CutTheKragle
Tourist
6 0 2

Having the exact same issue. Did anyone ever find a fix?

ImaginSensSta
Visitor
1 0 0

While there doesn't seem to be a great way to fix this other than use the export/import method, I think I found another solution/why this occurs.  It seems the URL is created at the time the duplicate product is saved.  So make sure you update the title of the duplicated page prior to the first save.

alanmayo
Visitor
1 0 1

Same issue/  We only have 150 products so I went through them all and duplicated them, and then deleted the original.

As per other instructions in thius thread, I set the name correctly in the title on the new product (simply removed 'Copy of'), checked duplicate images and SKUs, and it worked. 

It will take me some time, but...