Shopify
Shopify redirect chains: the primary domain
Shopify redirects every listed domain to the primary automatically, and manual URL redirects can add a second hop. The exact settings.
Shopify automatically redirects every connected domain to the selected primary domain, so a manual URL redirect that points through another connected host adds an avoidable hop. Confirm the primary under "Settings > Domains," remove the conflicting manual redirect, and retest the old URL until it reaches the final destination directly.
Why Shopify does this
Shopify redirects everything to one domain automatically: "The target, your online store, can only have one primary domain. When you change your primary domain, other domains that you have, such as a subdomain or the default your-store-name.myshopify.com redirect to the new primary domain." Their docs state it plainly: "Shopify automatically redirects all traffic to your primary domain, so customers always see your preferred URL." The setting lives in the admin: "From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Domains", then "Click Change domain type" and "Select Primary domain". On top of that sit manual URL redirects, where "the new URL can be a relative URL, such as /collection/shirts, or a full URL", and "To redirect traffic within your primary domain, use a relative URL."
Check it right now
Before changing anything, confirm what a crawler actually sees. The check is free, takes one URL and needs no account.
How to fix it
- From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Domains.
- Confirm which domain shows as the primary; every other listed domain, including the myshopify.com default, redirects to it.
- Click any redirecting domain, then "Change domain type", if the wrong one is primary.
- Open the URL redirects list and remove any manual redirect that points at a domain the primary-domain rule already redirects.
- Re-check the URL with the free redirect checker below and count the hops.
Why it happens again
Stores accumulate domains: the myshopify.com default, an apex, a www, an old rebrand. Each is one redirect away from the primary, and a manual URL redirect added for a campaign can point at a domain that redirects again. The admin shows domains, not hops, so the chain stays invisible until something counts it.
stillindexed re-checks the URLs you give it every 30 minutes on Starter and alerts when a directive changes, at most 30 minutes after it does. It is a monitor rather than a crawler: it watches a list you choose and tells you when one of seven things changes. Card first, no trial, and a 30 day refund.
Catching it next time
Fixing it once is the easy half. The setting that caused this can be changed again by anyone with access, and the page will keep returning 200 while it happens.
Other ways Shopify loses pages
- A page or product is live in the store but missing from Google, or a whole store is invisible after launch.
- my Shopify robots.txt is blocking pages that should be crawled
- A store page in Google shows the wrong URL as its preferred version, and the canonical tag in the page source points somewhere unexpected.
- my Shopify migration lost pages from search
- A Shopify storefront shows a connection warning because the automatic TLS certificate is stuck pending or failed.
A broken or chained redirect, on other platforms
Sources
Every claim about Shopify above is from their own documentation, read on 2026-08-30. Platforms change their settings; if one of these is out of date, their page wins and we would like to know.