Users seek to remove “/collections” and “/products” from Shopify URLs to create shorter, more SEO-friendly structures (e.g., changing domain/collections/category/products/product to domain/category/product).
Key concerns:
Current URL structure creates longer paths (often exceeding recommended 50 characters and 2-folder depth for optimal SEO)
Potential duplicate URL indexing in Google
Limited customization within Shopify’s default framework
Responses & workarounds:
One user notes this requires a complete custom UI/UX overhaul with custom routing, not feasible with traditional Shopify stores
Canonical URLs should prevent duplicate indexing issues (resources provided)
Some users express frustration with Shopify’s limitations and consider alternative platforms
One participant shares a YouTube video claiming to offer a solution for custom URL structures
Status: The discussion remains largely unresolved, with multiple users seeking updates or confirmation of working solutions. No official Shopify response or native feature implementation has been confirmed.
Summarized with AI on November 2.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Some stores do a complete overhaul of their website by building custom UI/UX that is not dependent on the Shopify out of the box storefront framework. You can build your own routing if you do that, but in the context of the more traditional Shopify store you are restricted to the url structure Shopify provides.
Same here, as per https://neilpatel.com/blog/seo-urls, he says to restrict the url to 2 folders and try to have a url around 50 characters to improve SEO ranking. Because of the shopify url structure I have up to 3 folders and reach 56 characters before even typing my product handle.
We would also very much like to see this done soon!
We signed up for Shopify long ago without much knowledge of websites, but have grown greatly since and it now seems we have outgrown Shopify.
This slow implementation of an important and such basic URL structuring shows Shopify does not value their community’s needs!
I will reluctantly begin looking for alternatives to Shopify. I hope to hear back with an aggressive implementation date from Shopify on this so we can continue to be partners.
Has this URL structure or feature been added to remove “products” or collecitons.. I also find it’s not very seo friendly and it’s creating duplicate urls in the google index for the same product..
Could we get some experts involved in this? This is like top priority, pretty sure everyone has been in this situation. It would be nice to have some support on this topic and ways Shopify can redirect hyperlinks. I tried redirecting but it doesn’t look like the theme works or Shopify redirect is broken. It would be nice if we had access to FTP to actually work on this but Shopify is limited. The only people who can change this would be the Shopify workers.
Hey, any updates on this here? If we’re unable to get rid of /products & /collections in the url, is it possible to replace them with something else? For example for a portfolio replace /products with /projects.