About smart redirects

WordPress automatically redirects visitors to similar content when they try to visit a link on your site that doesn’t exist. In this guide, you will learn how smart redirects work and how they help your site.

When a visitor lands on a page address that would normally show a page not found message (also known as a 404 error), WordPress searches your site’s posts and pages for matching slugs.

For example, if a visitor types yourgroovydomain.com/pro, and you have a page with the URL yourgroovydomain.com/projects/, the visitor will be redirected to that page because “projects” starts with “pro”.

If no matching post or page is found, visitors will see your 404 error page.

WordPress matches URLs by checking if any post or page slug starts with the entered text.

Smart redirects help keep links working. Visitors and search engines can still reach your content even if the link contains a typo or is outdated.

Some examples of how smart redirects benefit your site:

• Visitors who mistype a URL or use an outdated link still reach your content.
• Search engines can find your pages even when external links contain errors, which helps maintain your search rankings.
• Broken or mistyped external links won’t result in lost traffic or poor user experience.

If smart redirects are sending visitors to unintended pages, if you want to show your custom 404 page instead of redirecting, or if you want broken links to go to specific destinations, try these approaches:

• Create manual redirects (available on plugin-enabled plans): Install a redirect plugin to set specific redirect rules. Manual redirects always take priority over smart redirects because they prevent the 404 error that triggers smart redirects.
• Use distinct slugs: Since WordPress matches URLs by comparing slugs, make your page and post slugs (for example, ‘about-us’ in yourgroovydomain.com/about-us/) more unique so they don’t share the same starting characters. This prevents unpredictable redirects when multiple slugs match the entered URL.
• Monitor your links: Regularly check that external sites link to your current URLs. Update any outdated links you control rather than relying on redirects.