Shopify URL redirects — page still live

Redirect not working because the page still exists

Q: Redirect not working because the page still exists

Shopify only follows a URL redirect when the requested path would otherwise return a 404 Not Found. If a product, page, blog post, or collection is still published at that exact path — even one you meant to replace — Shopify serves that live content first and never checks your redirect list. This is a routing order issue, not a broken redirect: the redirect rule you set up is entirely correct, it's just never reached because the URL isn't actually missing yet.

You set up the redirect, but visiting the old URL still shows the old page instead of forwarding anywhere. Shopify redirects only ever fire on a 404 — if a page, product, or collection still exists at that exact path, Shopify serves it and never consults your redirect list. Drop your file in below to check which "old" URLs are still actually live.

Redirects are a fallback for 404s, not an override

Shopify's routing checks for a matching live resource first — a product, page, collection, blog article, or theme route at that exact path. Only when none exists does it fall through to the URL Redirects table and check whether that path is registered there. A redirect rule sitting on top of a page that still resolves normally simply never gets consulted; the live page always wins.

How this happens in practice

The usual case is a product or collection that was unpublished, moved, or renamed on the surface (title, handle in the URL) but the old resource technically still exists under a slightly different path, or a duplicate/legacy version of it is still published somewhere. Another common one: you added a redirect from /products/old-handle to a new page, but the product still exists at that handle because it was never actually deleted or unpublished — only its listing or menu link was removed.

How to tell this is your problem

Visit the "old" URL directly in an incognito window. If it loads a real page — even one that looks outdated or unlinked from your navigation — rather than Shopify's 404 page, the redirect can't be the issue, because it was never given the chance to run. Compare that against your redirect CSV's "Redirect from" column for the same path.

How to fix it

Unpublish, delete, or genuinely remove the old resource so the path returns a real 404 — then the existing redirect will take over automatically; you don't need to re-import it. Upload your redirects file above first to confirm the paths and format are otherwise correct, so once the old page is gone, the redirect is ready to go immediately.

More Import Shopify URL redirects from a CSV — free. guides

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