404 Solution vs Redirection

Stop losing visitors and search rankings to broken links. 404 Solution automatically redirects 404s to the right page — not just your homepage — using a 7-engine matching pipeline that includes a spell-checking algorithm to find what visitors actually typed. Example: A visitor hits /prodcut/awesome-item (typo). Most 404 redirect plugins send them to your homepage. 404 Solution’s spell-checker finds /product/awesome-item and redirects them there automatically. Why 404 Solution Is Different Most redirect plugins fall into two categories: tools that require you to manually write every rule, or tools that blindly send every 404 to your homepage. 404 Solution does neither. A spell-checking algorithm that actually matches typos. Using Levenshtein distance and N-gram scoring, 404 Solution catches /prodcut/, /categroy/, and /wooocmmerce/ and finds the real destination — something no other free plugin does. 7 matching engines, in sequence. Slug match → URL fix → Title keywords → Category/tag paths → Content search → Spelling similarity → Archive fallback. The first engine with a confident match wins. Automatic, from day one. Install and activate. 404 Solution starts capturing and redirecting immediately. You can tune it; you don’t have to. Redirect management when you need it. Full manual redirect editor, regex support, bulk actions, and CSV/JSON import compatible with Redirection’s export format. Debug mode that shows its work. Enable debug logging and see exactly which engine chose a redirect and why — a level of transparency no competing plugin offers. Built for real-world hosting. Self-healing database tables, auto-recovery from corruption, automatic log trimming, and zero wp-admin-wide banners. Ships with extras most plugins sell separately. HTTP 410 Gone, 307/308/451 status codes, Google Search Console integration, REST API, WP-CLI support, email digest reports, and security probe detection — all free. Unlike plugins that blindly redirect to your homepage A 404-to-homepage redirect tells Google your broken URL is the same page as your homepage. That creates a soft 404 — a page Google may index as duplicate content, eroding crawl budget and ranking over time. 404 Solution redirects to the correct destination, or returns a proper 410 Gone when content is permanently removed. Both outcomes are better for search engines and for visitors. How It Works A visitor reaches a URL that returns a 404. 404 Solution runs the URL through its 7-engine pipeline. Each engine tries to find a confident match above its score threshold. The first engine to find a match wins. The visitor is redirected to the correct page. The redirect is logged. You can review, edit, or delete it from the dashboard. The whole process adds no perceptible latency for visitors on non-404 pages. The matching pipeline only runs when a genuine 404 occurs. Key Features Intelligent Automatic Matching 7-engine matching pipeline (slug, URL fix, title, category/tag, content, spelling, archive) Levenshtein distance + N-gram scoring catches genuine typos Per-engine confidence thresholds — tune aggressiveness per engine Conditional engine groups — override the matching strategy for specific URL patterns Slug-change auto-detection — redirects created automatically when you rename a post Trash/deletion monitoring — redirect created automatically when a post is deleted Redirect Management Manual redirect editor with bulk actions Full regular expression support CSV and JSON import/export (compatible with Redirection plugin format) .htaccess and Nginx server-level export Per-post and per-term exclusion via meta box HTTP status codes: 301, 302, 307 (method-preserving temporary), 308 (method-preserving permanent), 410 Gone, 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons, and Meta Refresh GDPR-compliant: IP addresses are hashed before storage — never written to disk in plain text 404 Monitoring and Logging Captures every 404 hit with referrer, user agent, and timestamp Automatic log trimming with configurable disk usage limits Security monitoring — flags vulnerability scanner probes (.env, /wp-config.php, phpMyAdmin, etc.) Reporting and Diagnostics Stats dashboard with traffic trend charts (404s, redirects, captures over time) Email digest reports Debug logging — see which engine fired and why Google Search Console integration — import crawl errors and push fixes Internal link scanner to find broken links before visitors do Developer and Integrator Tools REST API for redirect management WP-CLI subcommands (list, create, delete, import, export) Scheduled maintenance cron Full WordPress Multisite support Compatibility WooCommerce (products, variations, categories, custom URLs) Yoast SEO, Rank Math WPML, Polylang, TranslatePress Easy Digital Downloads All custom post types and custom taxonomies Perfect For eCommerce sites (WooCommerce, EDD) with changing product URLs Content sites with evolving permalink structures Migrated sites where old URLs need to map to new content Large sites with thousands of pages where manual redirects are impractical

Redirection is the most popular redirect manager for WordPress. With it you can easily manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This can help reduce errors and improve your site ranking. Redirection is designed to be used on sites with a few redirects to sites with thousands of redirects. It has been a WordPress plugin for over 10 years and has been recommended countless times. And it’s free! Full documentation can be found at https://redirection.me Redirection is compatible with PHP from 7.4 to 8.5. Redirect manager Create and manage redirects quickly and easily without needing Apache or Nginx knowledge. If your WordPress supports permalinks then you can use Redirection to redirect any URL. There is full support for regular expressions so you can create redirect patterns to match any number of URLs. You can match query parameters and even pass them through to the target URL. The plugin can also be configured to monitor when post or page permalinks are changed and automatically create a redirect to the new URL. Conditional redirects In addition to straightforward URL matching you can redirect based on other conditions: Login status – redirect only if the user is logged in or logged out WordPress capability – redirect if the user is able to perform a certain capability Browser – redirect if the user is using a certain browser Referrer – redirect if the user visited the link from another page Cookies – redirect if a particular cookie is set HTTP headers – redirect based on a HTTP header Custom filter – redirect based on your own WordPress filter IP address – redirect if the client IP address matches Server – redirect another domain if also hosted on this server Page type – redirect if the current page is a 404 Full logging A configurable logging option allows to view all redirects occurring on your site, including information about the visitor, the browser used, and the referrer. A ‘hit’ count is maintained for each redirect so you can see if a URL is being used. Logs can be exported for external viewing, and can be searched and filtered for more detailed investigation. Display geographic information about an IP address, as well as a full user agent information, to try and understand who the visitor is. You are able to disable or reduce IP collection to meet the legal requirements of your geographic region, and can change the amount of information captured from the bare minimum to HTTP headers. You can also log any redirect happening on your site, including those performed outside of Redirection. Add HTTP headers HTTP headers can be added to redirects or your entire site that help reduce the impact of redirects or help increase security. You can also add your own custom headers. Track 404 errors Redirection will keep track of all 404 errors that occur on your site, allowing you to track down and fix problems. Errors can be grouped to show where you should focus your attention, and can be redirected in bulk. Query parameter handling You can match query parameters exactly, ignore them, and even pass them through to your target. Migrate Permalinks Changed your permalink structure? You can migrate old permalinks simply by entering the old permalink structure. Multiple migrations are supported. Apache & Nginx support By default Redirection will manage all redirects using WordPress. However you can configure it so redirects are automatically saved to a .htaccess file and handled by Apache itself. If you use Nginx then you can export redirects to an Nginx rewrite rules file. Fine-grained permissions Fine-grained permissions are available so you can customise the plugin for different users. This makes it particularly suitable for client sites where you may want to prevent certain actions, and remove functionality. Import & Export The plugin has a fully-featured import and export system and you can: Import and export to Apache .htaccess Export to Nginx rewrite rules Copy redirects between sites using JSON Import and export to CSV for viewing in a spreadsheet Use WP CLI to automate import and export You can also import from the following plugins: Simple 301 Redirects SEO Redirection Safe Redirect Manager Rank Math WordPress old slug redirects Quick Post/Pages redirects Search Regex compatible Redirection is compatible with Search Regex, allowing you to bulk update your redirects. Wait, it’s free? Yes, it’s really free. There’s no premium version and no need to pay money to get access to features. This is a dedicated redirect management plugin. Support Please submit bugs, patches, and feature requests to: https://github.com/johngodley/redirection Please submit translations to: https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/redirection