Wildcard redirects allow you to redirect multiple URLs that share a common pattern using a single redirect rule. Instead of creating individual redirects for every deleted product or changed collection, one wildcard rule can handle dozens or hundreds of similar URLs automatically.
Native Shopify does not support wildcard redirects through the built-in admin panel. You must use a third-party app like Doc 404 - fix Shopify 404 pages to implement wildcard redirect functionality in your store.
How Wildcard Redirects Work
A wildcard redirect uses special characters, typically an asterisk (*), to represent any number of characters in a URL path. The asterisk acts as a placeholder that matches everything at that position in the URL, allowing one rule to cover many different pages.
For static destination redirects, you send all matching URLs to a single page. If you removed an entire product category called "old-products," a wildcard rule like /old-products/* redirecting to /collections/all would catch every product page in that old category and send visitors to your main collections page.
Dynamic destination redirects preserve portions of the original URL in the new destination. When migrating from another platform where product URLs followed a different structure, a wildcard rule can maintain the product identifier. For example, /product/* redirecting to /products/* would automatically convert /product/t-shirt to /products/t-shirt.
When to Use Wildcard Redirects
Site migrations benefit significantly from wildcard redirects. Moving to Shopify from another e-commerce platform often means changing URL structures for all products, collections, and pages. Wildcard rules handle these broad changes efficiently without creating thousands of individual redirects.
Deleted product collections require wildcard redirects when you discontinue an entire category. Rather than letting every product page return a 404 error, a single wildcard rule redirects all those products to a relevant alternative collection or your homepage.
URL structure changes within Shopify also call for wildcard redirects. If you reorganize your blog from /archive-blog/* to /blog/*, one wildcard rule updates all your blog post URLs simultaneously while preserving the post identifiers.
Cleaning up broken links becomes manageable with wildcards. When you discover many 404 errors following a similar pattern, a wildcard redirect catches them all and directs visitors to helpful destinations rather than error pages.
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