Product Rewrites

Before you begin, make sure that you understand exactly what the redirect should accomplish. Think in terms of target / original request or redirect to / redirect from. Although people might still navigate to the former page from search engines or outdated links, the redirect causes your store to switch to the new target.

If automatic redirects are enabled for your store, there is no need to create a rewrite when a product URL Key is changed.

Add URL Rewrite for Product

When automatic redirects are enabled and you save a category, all product and category rewrites are generated in real time and stored in rewrite tables by default. This could result in significant performance issues for categories with many assigned products. The solution is to change this default and skip the generation of category/products URL rewrites of products for category save. In this case, product rewrites are generated only for the canonical product URL. See Automatic Product Redirects for more information.

Step 1. Plan the Rewrite

To avoid mistakes, write down the redirect to path and redirect from path and include the URL Key and suffix (if applicable).

If you are not sure, open each product page in your store, and copy the path from the address bar of your browser. When creating a product redirect, you can either include or exclude the category path. For this example, we create a product redirect without a category path.

Product with category path

Product without category path

Step 2. Create the Rewrite

1. On the Admin sidebar, go to Marketing > Search & SEO > URL Rewrites.

2. Before you proceed, do the following to verify that the request path is available.

   • In the search filter at the top of the Request Path column, enter the URL key of the page to be redirected and click Search.

   • If there are multiple redirect records for the page, find the one that matches the applicable store view and open it in edit mode.

   • In the upper-right corner, click Delete. When prompted, click OK to confirm.

3. In the upper-right corner of the URL Rewrites page, click Add URL Rewrite.

4. When you return to the URL Rewrites page, click Add URL Rewrite.

5. Set Create URL Rewrite to For product.

6. In the grid, find the product that is the target (destination) of the redirect and click the row.

   Add URL Rewrite for a Product

7. Below the category tree, click Skip Category Selection. For this example, the redirect does not include a category.

   Skip Category Selection

   The Add URL Rewrite for a Product page displays a link to the target in the upper-left corner, and the Target Path field displays the system version of the path, which cannot be changed. Initially, the Redirect Path field also displays the target path.

   • If you have multiple store views, set Store to the view where the rewrite applies. Otherwise, a rewrite will be created for each view.

   • In the Request Path field, replace the default by entering the URL key and suffix (if applicable) of the original product request. This is the redirect from product that you identified in the planning step.

     The Request Path must be unique for the specified store. If there is already a redirect that uses the same Request Path, you will receive an error when you try to save the redirect. The previous redirect must be deleted before you can create a new one.

   • Set Redirect Type to one of the following:

     • Temporary (302)
     • Permanent (301)

   • For your own reference, enter a brief Description of the rewrite.

   URL Rewrite Information

8. Before saving the redirect, review the following:

   • The link in the upper-left corner displays the name of the target product.
   • The Request Path contains the path for the original redirect from product.

9. When complete, click Save.

   The new product rewrite now appears at the top of the URL Rewrites grid.

   URL Rewrite Saved

Step 3. Test the Result

1. Go to the home page of your store.

2. Do one of the following:

   • Navigate to the original redirect from product request page.
   • In the address bar of the browser, enter the path to the original redirect from product immediately after the store URL. Then, press Enter.

   The new target product appears instead of the original product request.

Field Descriptions

In the process of redirection, all GET parameters specified in the URL will be removed due to security reasons.