Magento EE Create Custom Redirect for old URL

Question

I have a question regarding URL redirects on product records in Magento Enterprise Edition 1.14.2.1. I am noticing that URL redirects are not being created when a product's URL key is changed, even when the "Create Custom Redirect for old URL" checkbox is checked.

For example, if we change a product's URL key from 'my-awesome-product' to 'my-really-awesome-product' (with the 'Create Custom Redirect for old URL' checkbox checked), we are not seeing any redirect created which maps the request path 'my-awesome-product' to the target path 'my-really-awesome-product'. Instead, a rewrite for the old URL key 'my-awesome-product' is created with a target path to the product route (something like 'catalog/product/view/id/12345').

I understand what the rewrite to the product route is doing, but shouldn't the old URL path point to the new URL path and not to the product route? If the old URL path is still pointing to the product route then the old URL is still active and could potentially have some SEO implications.

Does anyone know what the expected behavior is supposed to be? We recently updated our Magento EE instance to the current latest release, version 1.14.2.1. Did something change, or is this a bug in this release? I can't recall what the behavior had been in previous releases.

Any insight on this would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The expected behavior is as you have described. 'Create Custom Redirect for old URL' means that Magento will redirect the old URL to this product. This is independent of what you have changed the URL to, so that you don't end up with a table full of rewrites that could point to other rewrites. I.e. If you decided to change 'my-really-awesome-product' to 'my-super-awesome-product' the chain would start to be more complicated, and tough to track down should you want to change it in the future. E.g.:

'my-awesome-product' -> 'my-really-awesome-product' -> 'my-super-awesome-product' -> 'catalog/product/view/id/12345'