How to use the Redirect Mapper
- Paste the old site’s URLs on the left — or type the old domain and click Load sitemap. Crawl exports, CSVs and sitemap XML work too.
- Do the same for the new site (a staging domain such as
site.webflow.iois fine). - Click Match URLs. Green rows are exact or same-slug matches; amber rows are similar pages or parent folders to check; red rows need a target.
- Edit any target inline (suggestions come from the new site’s URLs), then Download CSV or Create redirect rules for your platform. Import CSV and Import an existing map read spreadsheets, and the review sheet adds the match type for sign-off.
Why a redirect map matters
When URLs change in a migration, every old address that earned links, bookmarks or rankings needs a 301 redirect to its closest new page. Skip it and visitors hit 404s, and search engines drop the old pages instead of passing their signals to the new ones. The redirect map — a list of old URL → new URL — is the core deliverable of any SEO migration.
How the matching works
- Exact — the same path after normalizing (domain, http/https, trailing slash,
index.html,.html/.phpendings and letter case ignored). - Same slug — the last part of the path is the same, but the folder changed (
/portfolio/acme→/work/acme). - Similar — the words in the path overlap (with stemming, and ignoring dates and filler words such as “the” or “how to”), scored 0–100%.
- Parent folder — no equivalent page, so it falls back to the nearest folder that exists on the new site.
Rows whose old and new paths are identical need no redirect and are left out of the export. The list of new pages that nothing points to helps you spot content that was dropped or renamed.
From map to redirects
Create redirect rules opens the Redirect Generator with your map filled in: pick Webflow, .htaccess, Nginx, Netlify, Vercel, Next.js or Cloudflare and it checks for chains, loops and duplicates before you go live.
Also searched as: redirect mapping tool, redirect map, url mapping site migration, site migration redirects, old url to new url mapping, 301 redirect map, redirect mapping spreadsheet, seo migration tool.
Tools that pair well with the Redirect Mapper
- Broken Link Checker — Enter a page URL and every link on it — plus images, scripts and stylesheets if you like — is tested live, so you can fix 404s and redirect hops before visitors or Google run into them.
- Website Crawler — Start from your homepage and crawl up to 100 internal pages to uncover site-wide SEO issues — broken pages, duplicate titles, missing descriptions, H1 problems, noindex tags and slow pages — in one live report.
- Robots.txt Generator — Build a correct robots.txt in seconds: choose a preset, add rules per user-agent, block AI training crawlers and list your sitemaps — with live warnings for mistakes that could de-list your site.
- robots.txt Explainer — robots.txt rules are short but easy to misread.
Frequently asked questions
How does the automatic matching work?
Both lists are compared by path, so domains, http/https, trailing slashes, index files and .html or .php endings don’t matter. Identical paths match first, then pages with the same last slug (even in a different folder), then pages whose words are most similar — with light stemming, so “services” matches “service”. Dates and years in blog URLs are ignored.
What happens to old pages with no equivalent?
By default they redirect to the closest parent folder that exists on the new site (/blog/category/news → /blog). Anything left over is marked “No match” for you to fill in. Redirecting everything to the homepage is possible but Google treats mass homepage redirects like 404s, so use it sparingly.
Can I import and export CSV files?
Yes. Import CSV on each side reads a crawl export, a spreadsheet or a sitemap file and picks the column that holds URLs (for example Address or Loc). Import an existing map loads an old,new CSV to check and complete. Download CSV gives old_url,new_url for any redirect tool; the review sheet adds the match type and similarity for your team or client.
Is my URL list uploaded?
Pasted lists are matched entirely in your browser. Only “Load sitemap” asks our server to fetch that site’s public sitemap.
Which URLs should I include from the old site?
Every URL that has traffic, backlinks or rankings: the old sitemap, plus pages from your analytics, Search Console and a crawl. Old blog posts and PDFs are often missing from sitemaps.
Can I use it for a domain change?
Yes. If the new list uses a different domain, the targets keep the full new URLs; otherwise they are written as paths.
Can I install Redirect Mapper as a web app and use it offline?
Yes. Redirect Mapper is an installable web app (PWA) — installed from your browser, not downloaded from an app store. Click Install app at the top of this page in Chrome or Edge (Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS) or on Android, use Share → Add to Home Screen on iPhone and iPad, or File → Add to Dock in Safari 17+ on a Mac. It then opens in its own window with its own icon, and because it runs entirely in your browser it keeps working offline. Firefox on desktop can’t install web apps. How installing works.