Shopify Redirect: The 15% Loss Myth, Retired in 2016

Originally, the 15% figure traces back to Matt Cutts, around 2010, describing PageRank decay through a redirect. It was accurate for its time. However, Gary Illyes stated in 2016 that 30x redirects lose no PageRank at all, and that has been Google’s position ever since.

Therefore, the honest answer to “will a Shopify redirect cost me rankings” is no, not in the way you are picturing it. Redirects still go wrong, but they go wrong for different reasons than the one everybody worries about.

What Google says a redirect actually is

Above all, the mental model worth replacing is the pipe. People imagine authority flowing from the old URL to the new one, with some of it leaking out along the way. That is not how Google describes the mechanism.

In its redirect documentation, Google puts it this way: “Googlebot follows the redirect, and the indexing pipeline uses the redirect as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical.”

In other words, read that again, because it is a different idea entirely. A redirect is a canonicalisation signal, not a transfer with a toll. You are not moving authority between two pages. Instead, you are telling Google which URL is the real one, so the two stop being treated as separate pages at all.

Notably, Google’s own documentation never discusses equity loss here. Nor does it mention a percentage. The thing merchants fear most is simply not part of how Google explains the feature.

Google’s order of preference

Naturally, not every redirect is equally good. Here, though, Google is explicit about ranking the options.

1. Server-side redirects (301 or 308), described as “the best way to ensure that Google Search and people are directed to the correct page”.
2. Meta refresh redirects, set to zero seconds for a permanent move.
3. JavaScript redirects, which Google recommends only as a last resort.

Fortunately, on Shopify you get the first option by default, since the platform’s built-in redirect tool issues a proper server-side redirect. Therefore you are already using the method Google prefers.

How to create a Shopify redirect

The admin path moved, and consequently a lot of older guides still send you to the wrong place. As of now it is:

Content → Menus → View URL Redirects → Create URL redirect. Enter the old path under “Redirect from”, the new one under “Redirect to”, then save.

For a migration, however, you will not want to do that by hand. Accordingly, the same screen offers a CSV import with a sample template, which is the only sane approach past a few dozen URLs.

One limit to know before you plan anything ambitious. Shopify’s documentation states you “can’t redirect URLs that use fixed Shopify paths: /products, /collections, /collections/all.” The platform’s structural paths are not yours to reorganise, which also shapes how canonical URLs behave on Shopify.

What actually goes wrong with redirects

Since the equity question is settled, these are the failures worth your attention instead. In practice, all four are more common than any ranking loss.

Redirect chains. First, A points to B. Then B later points to C. Each hop adds latency, and long chains can stop being followed. Consequently, when you move a URL again, update the original redirect. Do not stack a new one on top.

Redirecting everything to the homepage. Admittedly this is the common instinct during a migration, but it is the worst option. A redirect to an irrelevant page is treated as a soft 404. So you get neither the consolidation nor a useful page for the visitor. Redirect to the closest equivalent, or let it 404 honestly.

Redirecting instead of deciding. A discontinued product is not automatically a redirect case. Sometimes keeping the page and marking it unavailable serves shoppers better, as we cover in our guide to out-of-stock product pages.

Forgetting internal links. A redirect rescues external links and bookmarks. Meanwhile your own navigation and body links should point at the new URL directly. Every internal link through a redirect is an unnecessary hop you control.

Your 404 page still matters

Redirects handle URLs you know about. By contrast, a 404 page handles the ones you do not. Unfortunately, most Shopify stores leave the theme default in place.

Firstly, a 404 should return a genuine 404 status, not a 200 with apologetic text. A soft 404 confuses crawlers about whether the page exists. Secondly, it should offer a search box, links to main collections, and plain language. The goal is recovering the visit, not apologising for it.

Ultimately, finding the broken URLs in the first place is the harder half, particularly on a catalogue that changes often. Plug In SEO reports broken links across the store and lets you create the redirect directly from that report. That removes the copying between two screens which makes this job tedious enough to postpone.