About smart redirects

Smart redirects automatically send visitors to similar content when they try to visit a link on your WordPress site that does not exist. This guide explains 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. A slug is the part of a URL that identifies a specific page or post—for example, projects in yourgroovydomain.com/projects/.

For example, if a visitor types yourgroovydomain.com/pro, and you have a page with the URL yourgroovydomain.com/projects/, WordPress redirects the visitor to that page because “projects” starts with “pro.” WordPress matches URLs by checking if any post or page slug starts with the entered text.

If WordPress finds no matching post or page, visitors see your 404 error page.

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 Visitors and search engines can still reach your content even if the link contains a typo or is outdated.

Here are some ways 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• Visitors who mistype a URL or use an outdated link still reach your content.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 do not result in lost traffic or a poor visitor experience.

You can control where visitors go instead of relying on smart redirects. Consider the following approaches if smart redirects send visitors to unintended pages, you want to show your custom 404 page, or you want broken links to go to specific destinations:

• Create manual redirects (available on plugin-enabled plans): Install a redirect plugin to set specific redirect rules. Manual redirects 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 do not 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 Update any outdated links you control rather than relying on redirects.