Redirect old URLs
Send visitors — and search engines — from addresses you no longer use to the pages that replaced them, so nothing lands on a 404.
Every store accumulates dead addresses. You move a product, rename a category, or bring a store over from another platform and suddenly every link people saved, every page Google indexed, and every printed QR code points at nothing.
A redirect fixes that. Open Settings → Redirects and map the old address to the new one; anyone who visits the old one lands on the right page instead of a 404.
When you need one
- You moved to YNS from another platform. Its URLs almost certainly looked different from yours. Redirect the old shapes and you keep the search ranking you already earned.
- You renamed or deleted a product or category. Its address changed with it.
- You want a short link.
/sms→/?utm_source=smsgives you something you can put on a flyer. - You reorganized your pages.
/info/shippingbecame/shipping.
Create a redirect
Choose Create redirect and fill in:
| Field | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| From | The old address, as a path — /old-url |
| To | The new one. A path (/new-url), or a full https://… address on another site |
| Match | How closely the old address has to match — see below |
| Type | 301 permanent, or 302 temporary |
Match types
| Match | Matches | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Exact | Only that one address | A single page that moved |
| Section | That address and everything under it | A whole category or folder, e.g. everything under /blog/old/ |
| Regex | A pattern, with $1 in the target for what it captured | Bulk shapes — ^/produkt/(.*)$ → /product/$1 |
Tip: Regex is how you move a whole platform migration in one row. If every old product URL was
/produkt/<name>and every new one is/product/<name>, that's one rule instead of two thousand.
301 or 302?
301 means permanent — the move is final, and search engines transfer the old page's ranking to the new one. That's what you want for a real move.
302 means temporary — the old address is coming back. Use it for a page that's briefly pointing somewhere else, like a sold-out product parked on its category. Search engines keep the old address indexed.
Note: Use 301 for migrations. A 302 tells Google not to move the ranking across, which is the opposite of what you want when you've just changed platforms.
Keep params
The Keep params switch decides what happens to anything after the ? in the address. Leave it on so a visitor arriving on /old-url?utm_source=newsletter keeps that tracking on the new page. Turn it off when the old parameters mean nothing on the new page.
Import a list
If your redirects live in a spreadsheet — which they usually do after a migration — use Import from spreadsheet… and paste them in, one per line:
The type at the end is optional. Rows it can't read are skipped and counted, so you can see whether everything landed.
Watch what's actually being used
Each row shows a Hits count — how often that redirect fired — and the last time it was used. Hover the column header to see the period it covers. That tells you two useful things: which old addresses people are genuinely still visiting, and which rules have never fired once and can be deleted.
The Active switch turns a rule off without deleting it, which is the safe way to test whether a redirect is causing something unexpected.
FAQ
The address I want to redirect is also a real page on my store.
You'll be warned when you save, but the redirect is still allowed and takes priority over the real page. That's occasionally exactly what you want — just make sure it's deliberate, because the real page becomes unreachable.
How long does a redirect take to work?
Very quickly — it's live for new visitors shortly after you save. If your own browser still shows the old page, it has cached a previous redirect; try a private window.
Will this fix my search rankings?
It preserves them. A 301 from the old address tells Google the page moved and passes its authority to the new one. Leaving old URLs to 404 is how migrations lose traffic. See Improve your SEO.
Can I redirect to a completely different website?
Yes — put the full https://… address in the To field.
Do redirects work on my custom domain?
Yes. They apply to your store however visitors reach it — your free address or your own domain.
What's next
- Point your own domain at your store in Connect a custom domain.
- Keep search engines happy with Improve your SEO.
- Check nothing else is broken in Spot and fix store issues.