Visitor clicks an old link
A customer finds your product via Google, a saved bookmark, or a link someone shared months ago. They expect to see the product page.
WooCommerce Plugin
Product 404 Redirects for WooCommerce
Automatically redirects deleted product URLs to their category pages - zero configuration, SEO-friendly 301 redirects, instant recovery.
Version 1.0.0
The Problem
What happens when you delete a product?
Google, Pinterest, old social posts, and customer bookmarks still remember the URL. When someone clicks that link, they hit a 404 error page. The customer leaves. You lose the sale. Google downgrades your SEO.
Your store shows a 404
The product has been deleted or discontinued, so WordPress returns a generic "Page not found" error. No product, no suggestions, nothing useful.
The customer leaves
With nowhere to go, the visitor bounces. You lose the traffic, the potential sale, and over time the accumulated SEO value of that URL decays to nothing.
The plugin steps in
Instead of showing a 404, the visitor is redirected to the product's category page - a shelf full of products they are interested in. Sale rescued.
Key Features
Everything you need, nothing you don't
Product 404 Redirects is built to do one thing exceptionally well - rescue lost traffic from deleted products with zero overhead.
Zero Configuration
Install, activate, done. Works retroactively with products you have already deleted. No settings to tweak, no rules to create - it just works.
Intelligent Category Matching
Picks the most specific, most populated category the product belonged to. Visitors land on a page full of relevant products, not a generic fallback.
SEO-Friendly 301 Redirects
Search engines transfer link equity to the category page instead of indexing dead URLs. Your domain authority stays intact over time.
Visitor-Friendly Notice
A subtle, dismissible toast notification tells the customer what happened and invites them to keep browsing. Fully customisable text, auto-dismiss timer, and CSS support.
Proactive Mapping
When you trash or delete a product, the slug-to-category mapping is saved immediately. Even permanently deleted products are covered from the moment they are removed.
Dashboard Analytics
See how many visitors you have rescued today, this week, this month, and all time. Track the real impact of recovered traffic at a glance.
Redirect Manager
View every saved redirect rule, its hit count, and the destination page. Delete rules you no longer need. Full control without leaving the WordPress admin.
Lightweight & HPOS Compatible
No external dependencies, no JavaScript frameworks, no bloat. Adds a single, tiny database query on 404 pages only. Fully compatible with WooCommerce High-Performance Order Storage.
Under the Hood
How it works under the hood
The plugin hooks into WordPress at the template_redirect stage. When it detects a 404, it searches for a match in three places.
Saved Redirect Map
A lightweight lookup table populated proactively when products are trashed and lazily when 404s are first encountered. The fastest path to a redirect.
Trashed Products
Products still in the WordPress trash with a matching slug are found automatically. Their category data is used to build the redirect destination.
Old Slug History
WordPress stores previous slugs in postmeta. Renamed-then-deleted products are caught through this fallback, so even old URLs are covered.
301 Redirect
Once a match is found, the plugin resolves the product's primary category, issues a 301 Moved Permanently redirect, and sets a short-lived cookie for the visitor notice.
Requirements
What you need
Minimal requirements. Works with any standard WooCommerce setup out of the box.
WordPress 6.7+
Requires WordPress 6.7 or later. Tested up to WordPress 6.9.1. Follows WordPress coding standards and is compatible with the latest WordPress releases.
WooCommerce 10+
Requires WooCommerce 10.0 or later. Tested up to WooCommerce 10.5.2. Fully compatible with HPOS (High-Performance Order Storage).
PHP 7.4+
Requires PHP 7.4 or later. PHP 8.0 or newer is recommended for optimal performance and full language feature support.
Available Now on WooCommerce Marketplace
Product 404 Redirects for WooCommerce is live and ready to install. Get it from the official WooCommerce Marketplace and start recovering lost traffic today.
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Also Available
Running a different platform?
Product 404 Redirects is also available for Shopify and Shopware 6. Same goal - recover every dead product link - built natively for each platform.
Product 404 RedirectsShopify version
The same app for Shopify stores. Automatically redirects deleted product URLs to relevant collection pages via the Shopify App Store.
Product 404 RedirectsShopware 6 version
The same plugin for Shopware 6 stores. Hooks into Shopware's kernel exception events with Symfony event subscribers and DAL lifecycle integration.
Looking for plugins on other platforms? View all platforms