§ 01 Panel
What the URL Redirects panel does
The URL Redirects panel under Online Store > Navigation is Shopify's single surface for managing redirects. It supports two operations: adding a single redirect (From path, To URL) and importing a CSV of redirects in bulk. Every redirect resolved via this panel applies storefront-wide, immediately. The panel also lists redirects created automatically by Shopify when a handle changes, so you can see the full inventory in one place.
The panel does not expose 301 vs 302 selection in the UI — Shopify treats every URL redirect as a permanent (301) redirect, which is the correct default for SEO. [UNVERIFIED] Shopify's primary URL-redirect doc2 would be the verbatim source for the status code claim, but the page currently resolves to Online Store overview content. Google's redirects guidance6 independently confirms that 301 is the recommended permanent redirect type and the type Google honours for PageRank pass-through.
What the panel does not do: it does not support regex matching, conditional redirects (by country, device, or user-agent), or temporary (302) redirects. Stores that need conditional redirects rely on Shopify Markets for country-based routing or theme-side JavaScript redirects for client-side logic. Neither is a substitute for a 301 in SEO terms.
§ 02 Doc gap
A note on Shopify's URL-redirect docs
During the May 2026 research window, all four Shopify URL-redirect help URLs — /url-redirect, /url-redirect/about-url-redirect, /url-redirect/create-url-redirect, /url-redirect/create-bulk-url-redirect — resolved to the Online Store help section's overview content rather than the specific article bodies. This affects four kinds of claims below: exact CSV file size limits, exact redirect count limits per store, exact 301 vs 302 status code documentation, and edge-case behaviour around redirect chains.
Where Shopify's primary doc is unavailable, I cite the closest published Shopify reference (the SEO overview1 and the sitemap doc3). The redirect feature itself is real and documented in the admin UI — you can see and use the panel today — but specific quantitative claims (file size limits, redirect chain depth) cannot be sourced verbatim during this verification window.
§ 03 Auto-redirect
The auto-redirect on handle change
When you change the URL handle of a product, collection, page, or blog post while the resource is published, Shopify automatically creates a 301 redirect from the old handle to the new one. The redirect appears in the URL Redirects panel after the save. This is the single most useful default in Shopify SEO — it eliminates the most common cause of post-edit traffic drops on every other ecommerce platform.
The catch: the auto-redirect only fires when the published status is preserved through the change. If you unpublish the resource, change the handle, then republish, no redirect is created — and the old URL returns 404. The leaf at /shopify-seo/changing-product-handles/ walks the safe sequence step by step.
The auto-redirect is also additive. If you change a handle three times in a row (handle-a → handle-b → handle-c → handle-d), Shopify creates three redirects, not one. Best practice for SEO: collapse redirect chains by editing the earlier redirects to point directly to the final URL, keeping the chain to a single hop. Google's redirect guidance6 recommends a maximum of five hops, but the cleanest SEO outcome is always a single 301 to the final destination.
§ 04 Bulk
Bulk CSV imports
The URL Redirects panel accepts CSV imports for bulk redirect creation. The CSV has two columns: Redirect from (the legacy path, relative to the storefront origin) and Redirect to (the new destination, either a relative path on the same store or an absolute URL). UTF-8 encoding is required. The import processes asynchronously — large imports may take several minutes to complete, with completed rows visible in the panel as they process.
The leaf at /shopify-seo/redirects-bulk-csv/ walks the import workflow, the column expectations, and the most common silent-skip patterns (trailing whitespace, leading slashes in inconsistent places, double-encoded URLs).
§ 05 Migration
Redirect mapping on migration
When migrating to Shopify from another platform (BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Wix, Webflow), the redirect map is the single most important SEO deliverable. Every indexed legacy URL needs a 301 redirect to the closest equivalent on Shopify. The mapping is 1:1 where possible — same product on the legacy platform maps to the same product on Shopify — with a content-equivalent collection or category page used as the fallback for retired products. The homepage of the legacy site maps to the homepage of the new store, with a non-redirect.
The leaf at /shopify-seo/redirects-on-migration/ walks the full workflow: source-side crawl (Screaming Frog or equivalent), URL matching pass, fallback rules for retired products, the CSV format, the verification pass, and the GSC change-of-address tool (which applies only when changing domains, not when changing platforms on the same domain).
§ 06 Audit
Auditing redirects on an existing store
On a store that's been live for years, the URL Redirects panel accumulates hundreds of legacy redirects — automatic ones from handle changes, manual ones from past migrations, and bulk-imported ones from old campaigns. Most are still doing useful work. A small percentage are obsolete (the legacy URL hasn't been requested in months) or counterproductive (the target no longer exists, creating a redirect-to-404). The audit pass identifies both.
The audit method: export the URL Redirects panel as CSV (the panel supports export). Run each From URL through GSC's URL Inspection or a server log analyzer to count requests in the last 30 days. Redirects with zero requests and no inbound link signals can usually be removed. Redirects pointing to a 404 should be repointed to the closest live equivalent.
The same audit pass surfaces redirect chains (A → B → C). For SEO, collapse every chain to A → C and leave B intact. The 48-72hr Google reindex window4 applies to redirect changes the same way it does to content changes — expect Google to re-crawl and update its index of the affected URLs within that window.
