Advice on 404's after store migration

Shopify Discussion
1

Hi all

We are in the process of migrating our website from woocommerce to Shopify with the Cart2cart app.

I have a question about 404’s although we are confident that all the main pages have redirects set up i am just a bit worried about any 404 pages that fall through the gaps.

Is there a way i can identify/view any new 404 pages so i can redirect these after the full migration? Can this be done by an app or another way.

2

Hi @Mungo2007! You can definitely monitor any 404 pages that appear after your migration. The easiest way is through Google Search Console, which will automatically show all “Not found (404)” URLs so you can add redirects later. You can also use any SEO app that can crawl the 404 sites for you. If needed, Google Analytics can also track visits to your 404 page. After launch, just review these tools regularly and create redirects for any URLs that show up. Hope this helps! :blush:

4

Hey @Mungo2007

Google Search Console is going to be your best friend here. Once you’ve migrated, check the Coverage report and look for pages with 404 errors. Google will show you which URLs they’re finding that return 404s, and you can systematically create redirects for the important ones. This updates as Google crawls your site, so keep checking it regularly for the first few weeks after migration.

5

Hi,

Hope this will help

-Use Shopify’s built-in analytics reports for 404 monitoring
-Check Google Search Console after the new site goes live
-Use crawler tool before and after launch

6

thanks for the replies guys looks like search console will be the answer

@Small_Task_Help you mentioned a crawler tool do you have details of this, will this check for 404’s before the launch?

7

Hi @Mungo2007

You can see the missed 404s on Shopify but you’ll have to monitor them yourself as Shopify doesn’t expose them natively. An easy fix is to direct all 404 hits to a very simple script or analytics page so you know exactly what URLs are being requested. With tools such as Google Analytics or Matomo your 404 page can be tracked as an event and you can see each and every missing url which in turn can be used to add redirects as they come. This gives you a nice clean post-migration fallback without the need for bloat apps.

8

Hi @Mungo2007,

Glad you found the redirect issue. Using full URLs instead of relative paths is a surprisingly common mistake after WooCommerce migrations.

One thing I’d add regarding finding 404s earlier than Search Console - most redirect apps are reactive. They only report a broken URL after someone (or Googlebot) has already requested it.

A more proactive approach is to start with the URLs that existed before the migration and verify that each one either returns a valid page or redirects correctly.

If your old site is no longer available, the Wayback Machine can often be used to recover much of the original WooCommerce URL structure. From there, you can run a bulk HTTP status check against your live Shopify store and quickly identify any URLs still returning 404s, instead of waiting for Search Console to discover them over time.

Hope that helps, and good luck with the cleanup!