What breaks redirect mapping in practice
These are the reasons bulk redirects go wrong after a migration:
Common Scenarios:
- Thousands of old URLs with no bulk mapping tool in the Shopify admin
- Old paths like /product/wool-coat-black no longer matching new /products/ handles
- Only the homepage being set as the target, which Google treats as a soft 404
- Duplicate source URLs rejected on import, wasting a whole batch
Redirects mapped locally, nothing uploaded
The generator normalises both sides of the mapping - dropping domain prefixes, file extensions and generic ecommerce path segments - then matches exact handles first, then normalised slugs, then only flags near-misses for you to confirm.
Features:
- Three-tier matching: Exact handle, normalised slug, then a conservative fuzzy pass
- Nothing silently guessed: Unmatched rows are exported separately for manual review
- Soft-404 guardrails: Warns before you mass-redirect to the homepage or import duplicates
- Shopify-ready output: Redirect from / Redirect to columns, importable as-is
How to build your redirect file
- Export your old store URLs with a crawler like Screaming Frog, or download the page list from Search Console.
- Upload the file here - CSV (first column) and one-URL-per-line text both work.
- Optionally upload your new Shopify product CSV so handles are matched exactly instead of inferred.
- Review the split between auto-matched and needs-review rows before trusting the output.
- Export and import into Shopify at Online Store > Navigation > URL Redirects.
What a correct mapping looks like
- Before: oldstore.com/product/wool-coat-black/ After: products/wool-coat-black
- Before: oldstore.com/shop/linen-shirt.html After: products/linen-shirt
Who this is for
- Store owners mid-migration: Moving from WooCommerce, Etsy, Magento or BigCommerce and needing redirects without buying an app
- Agencies handling migrations: Bulk-mapping client URL inventories without a subscription
- Stores that changed URL structure: Reclaiming rankings after a permalink or handle rewrite
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- Does this tool handle domain-level redirects?
- No. Moving oldstore.com to newstore.com is a DNS or platform setting. This tool maps paths inside one domain, which is where the bulk of migration redirects live.
- What if my old URLs were completely rebuilt?
- Match rates will be lower. Use the needs-review export and fix those rows manually - importing guessed redirects is worse than leaving them out.
- Why must I avoid redirecting everything to the homepage?
- Search engines treat those as soft 404s and ignore the signal, so you keep neither the ranking nor the user.
- Are my URLs uploaded to a server?
- No. Parsing and matching run entirely in your browser.
- Does it work if I only have Search Console data?
- Yes. Export your old pages from Search Console and use that list as the input.