How to find and fix broken links and 404s on Shopify

Short answer: Broken links send shoppers and Google to pages that no longer exist. Find them in two places, links inside your own pages and missing pages visitors actually hit, then fix each one by updating the link or adding a 301 redirect from the old address to the closest live page.

Where broken links come from

• Deleted or renamed products, collections and pages.
• Links typed by hand in descriptions and blog posts.
• Old links from other sites and from ads to pages that moved.

Find them

1. Search Console: the pages report lists addresses Google tried that returned "Not found (404)".
2. Your own content: check the links inside product descriptions, pages and blog posts with a link checker.
3. Visitor 404s: a 404 log shows the missing addresses real shoppers hit, which are the ones worth fixing first.

Fix them

• Inside your content: edit the link to point to the right page.
• Old addresses: add a 301 redirect from the old address to the most relevant live page: the replacement product, its collection, or a close match. Avoid sending everything to the home page.
• In Shopify, redirects live under URL redirects; search for it in your admin. You can import them in bulk from a CSV.

Prevent new ones

When you rename a product or page, Shopify can create a redirect from the old address; leave that box checked. Before deleting a product with traffic, decide where its address should redirect.