Creating redirects for removed products

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A user sought clarification on Shopify’s URL redirect documentation, which states certain paths like /products, /collections, and /collections/all cannot be redirected. This appeared to conflict with their need to redirect deleted product URLs to relevant collection pages.

Key Clarifications:

  • The restriction applies only to exact path matches (e.g., /products itself), not individual product URLs (e.g., /products/specific-item)
  • Redirects from deleted product pages (404s) to collections, other products, or any valid page are fully supported
  • The documentation distinguishes between paths that “begin with” certain prefixes versus “exact” fixed paths

Additional Points:

  • Redirects only activate when the original URL returns a 404 error
  • Standard Shopify stores support up to 100,000 redirects (20 million for Plus)
  • Wildcards are not natively supported for bulk redirects
  • Third-party apps can handle bulk redirect creation for large-scale needs

The user plans to redirect approximately 10,000 removed product URLs from a single brand to a similar collection page.

Summarized with AI on October 23. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello,

I want to create redirects for removed products, but in the Shopify’s URL redirecting instructions it states that you cannot redirect urls that have “/products” portion, which is all product pages.

Screenshot 2025-10-20 at 3.42.16 PM
Screenshot 2025-10-20 at 3.42.16 PM1540×450 80.4 KB

Could someone please clarify?

Thank you,

Ken

3

You’re reading it wrong.

It says you can’t create redirect like
/products => /pages/ABC or
/collections=> / or
/collections/all=> /collections/OPQ

However, you definitely can create redirect like
/products/ABC=> /products/XYZ

Also, keep in mind that redirect would not kick-in if the original URL can be rendered.
Original URL have to result in 404 for redirection to work.
So, you can’t redirect from one “visible” product to another one.

3 Likes
4

Hmm but so if I removed a product and now it’s 404, I can’t redirect that url to a collection of products similar to the one that was removed? That seems counterintuitive…

1 Like
5

Hi @Bath4All

Yes, absolutely! You can redirect any 404 product URL to another page — such as a collection, homepage, or a similar product.

For example:
If your old product URL was
https://yourstore.com/products/old-product
and you want to redirect it to a similar collection page, you can create a redirect like this:
From: /products/old-product
To: /collections/similar-products

You can set this up in Shopify admin by going to:
Online Store → Navigation → View URL Redirects → Create URL Redirect.

Best regards,
Devcoder :laptop:

3 Likes
6

That’s what I thought. But the link in my OP says you can’t…

7

Hi @Bath4All

Try it once using the steps I sent you.

Best regards,
Devcoder :laptop:

8

No, you can and that’s precisely what I said in my previous post.

See the difference in wording:

  • You can’t redirect URLs that begin with the following prefixes: /apps, /application, /cart, /carts, /orders, /services, or /shop.
  • You can’t redirect URLs that use fixed Shopify paths: /products, /collections, /collections/all.

See that first sentence uses “begin with the prefixes”, but the second one does not?
If it was the same meaning, then they would probably combine those 2 lists.

Second sentence means you can’t redirect URLs that match exactly, not start with.

I guess their choice of words also meant to convey that if you have several markets, you can’t redirect /en/products and /es/products (for example) in addition to /products


And yes, as already suggested -- you can simply try and see what happens.
2 Likes
10

This means Shopify is not allowed us to do redirections from paths like /products, /collections/, /collections/all, etc. as it will redirect all related pages and cause error. You can only redirect broken links from them, and this is what it said.

1 Like
11

Thanks guys.

Another question. The shopify guide states there is a 10,000 limit for redirects.

I removed about 10,000 products from the same brand. Their urls were all like this:

/products/brandname-sku-color

Can I use a wildcard to setup a bulk redirect?

like this:

/products/brandname-* => /collections/similar-collection

thx

1 Like
12

It’s 100 000:

  • You can create a maximum of 100,000 URL redirects unless your store is on the Plus plan, which has a maximum of 20,000,000 URL redirects.

You can’t use wildcards, but you there are apps which can do bulk edits even on free tier – https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shopify-admin/productivity-tools/bulk-actions#resources-without-bulk-edit-bulk-action

@SEOAnt-Jeffery can probably better help you here.

2 Likes