URL redirects and broken links

How do redirect suggestions work?

SignalLane suggests Shopify redirects for broken pages and you choose which to create. It never creates one on its own, never touches yours, and its redirects stay if you uninstall.

Last reviewed October 19, 20264 min read

A Shopify redirect is a permanent redirect stored in your Shopify admin. It works without JavaScript and search engines follow it, which makes it the only real fix for an old link. SignalLane looks at your broken pages, suggests where each one should go, and you choose which to create: one at a time from a page's menu, or several ticked pages at once on the Broken links page. It never creates a redirect on its own.

Turn it on

  1. On the URL redirects page's Settings tab, press Allow redirect access and approve it in Shopify's window. The permission is optional: you can decline it and the rest of SignalLane still works.
  2. Keep Suggest redirects for broken product links switched on.
  3. Open View all broken links and choose Look for suggestions in its Actions menu.

Each press looks at your busiest recent broken pages that have no suggestion yet, skipping pages you already redirect in Shopify and pages you hid, and suggests a redirect only where it is sure of the destination. It never suggests a guess by name.

Find a suggestion in a row's menu looks for one page right now, for any kind of broken page except a search page. It can also offer a guess by name, which is all a missing page, blog post or other old link can get.

When it looks at a page and finds nothing to suggest, the row says "No suggestion found on (date)." That page is skipped until someone reaches it again or your products are next read in full, for example with Sync now on the Catalogue page.

How a match was found

Each suggestion carries a badge:

  • Renamed — SignalLane saw this web address change; the destination is the same product or collection at its new address.
  • Same collection — the product is in a collection with the one that is gone.
  • Same product type — it has the same product type.
  • Guess by name — the two addresses share words, and that is all it matched on.

Some redirects have no badge: they were suggested before SignalLane recorded how, or you chose the destination yourself.

AI suggestions for redirects

Beside Find a suggestion, a page's menu shows Ask AI for a suggestion. About AI credits. It lets SignalLane's AI pick one of your live products or pages by meaning, or none. Its suggestion is badged AI match, never created in bulk and never used to send visitors on by itself: you check it and create the redirect from the row. Each answer uses 1 AI credit, and a page it finds nothing for uses none.

The same applies to two other AI asks: Ask AI on a group that Find patterns suggests, to pick where its pages should go, and Ask AI to find matches on a linked store's catalogue page, to pair products the two stores sell under different names (both stores must allow AI matching first).

Turn AI suggestions off

On the URL redirects page's Settings tab, the AI suggestions for redirects card lists where each of these three asks lives, says it uses 1 credit per answer, and holds the switch Use AI for redirect suggestions, which is on by default. Turned off, all three asks are disabled with the line "AI suggestions for redirects are turned off. Turn them on in URL redirects › Settings.", and any request still waiting for an answer is cancelled, its credits released and never charged. Answers already given stay. Find patterns is not AI, costs nothing, and is not affected.

Approve, change or dismiss

In the page's … menu, Approve suggestion opens a dialogue filled in with the suggested page. Keep it and confirm, or pick another destination. Every button that writes a Shopify redirect asks you to confirm first and names both paths. Dismiss suggestion says no to that one page; the broken page stays in the list.

Your own redirects are safe

  • Before it creates anything, SignalLane asks Shopify about that exact path and stops if someone else's redirect is already there.
  • It never touches a redirect you made, and can only remove the ones it created.
  • Turning the switch off stops new suggestions and redirects. It removes none it already created.

Before you uninstall

Redirects SignalLane created stay on your store if you uninstall the app, because SignalLane cannot remove them once its access has gone. If you do not want them, press Remove all SignalLane redirects on the URL redirects page first. It removes only SignalLane's redirects, and visitors following those old links get "not found" again.

Questions and answers

Will SignalLane overwrite a redirect I made?
No. Before it creates one, SignalLane asks Shopify about that exact path and stops if a redirect is already there. It can only remove redirects it created.
What happens to SignalLane's redirects if I uninstall?
They stay on your store. SignalLane cannot remove them once its access has gone, so press Remove all SignalLane redirects on the URL redirects page's Settings tab first if you do not want them.

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