> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.daftplug.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Redirects and links

> Redirect rules, the 404 monitor, and internal link suggestions.

**Rankify > Settings > Redirects & Links**

The switches are here. The rules themselves live on **Rankify > Redirects & Links**, which is its own admin page.

## Redirects

<ParamField path="Redirect Manager" type="toggle" default="on">
  Applies your redirect rules to incoming requests.

  Rules only run on requests that would otherwise return a 404, so **a redirect can never hide a page that actually exists**. That is a deliberate design choice and it removes an entire category of accident, where a broad rule quietly shadows live content.

  Turning this off keeps your rules but stops applying them.
</ParamField>

<ParamField path="Redirect Automatically When a URL Changes" type="toggle" default="on">
  Pro. Writes a 301 the moment you change the slug of a published page, so existing links keep working.

  Only published posts are watched, so a draft URL nobody ever had is never redirected. Rename a page twice and the first rule is repointed at the new address rather than becoming a chain.
</ParamField>

<Tip>
  Renaming a published page and forgetting the redirect is the most common way a site loses traffic it had already earned. If you enable one Pro feature on this tab, make it this one.
</Tip>

## 404 monitor

<ParamField path="Log 404s" type="toggle" default="on">
  Records the URLs people and crawlers ask for that do not exist, ranked by how often they are requested.

  Repeat requests for the same URL increment a counter rather than adding rows, and common bot probes are ignored, so the log stays small even on a site under constant scanning.
</ParamField>

<ParamField path="Keep entries for (days)" type="number" default="30">
  Entries older than this are removed daily. A hard row cap applies as well, so the log cannot grow without limit.
</ParamField>

<ParamField path="Also ignore these URLs" type="textarea">
  One per line. A URL containing any of these is not logged.

  ```text theme={null}
  /wp-json
  /cgi-bin
  ```

  `wp-login.php`, `xmlrpc.php`, favicons, and feeds are already ignored.
</ParamField>

### Using the log

The point is not to fix every 404. Most of them are scanners looking for vulnerabilities, and a 404 is the correct answer.

Sort by hit count and look for two things:

<Steps>
  <Step title="URLs that used to exist on your site">
    Someone renamed or deleted a page and the links are still out there. Redirect these to the closest equivalent.
  </Step>

  <Step title="URLs with real referrers">
    Another site is linking to you and getting a 404. That is inbound authority being wasted. Redirect it.
  </Step>
</Steps>

<Warning>
  Do not redirect everything to your homepage. A visitor looking for a specific page gets dumped somewhere unrelated, and search engines treat a redirect to an irrelevant page as a soft 404 anyway. Redirect to the closest match, or let it 404 honestly.
</Warning>

## Internal links

<ParamField path="Link Suggestions" type="toggle" default="on">
  Pro. While editing, shows related pages worth linking to from this one.

  Suggestions are ranked by shared categories and tags, overlapping wording, and whether the page is an orphan. Pages you already link to are left out.
</ParamField>

Internal links are how search engines learn which of your pages matter. A page nothing links to is found only through your sitemap, which is the weakest possible signal that it is important.

<Note>
  Orphan pages, ones nothing on your site links to, are listed on the **Redirects & Links** page. They are usually old landing pages, or posts published before you had a category structure.
</Note>

## The Redirects & Links page

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Redirect rules" icon="arrow-right-arrow-left">
    Add, edit, import, and export. Rules apply only to requests that would 404.
  </Card>

  <Card title="404 log" icon="triangle-exclamation">
    Missing URLs by hit count, with one-click redirect creation.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Orphan pages" icon="link-slash">
    Pro. Pages nothing else links to.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Import and export" icon="file-arrow-down">
    Move rules between sites, or bring them from another plugin.
  </Card>
</Columns>

## Choosing a redirect type

| Type          | Use when                                                                                                 |
| ------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| 301 permanent | The page has moved for good. Passes ranking signals. The usual choice.                                   |
| 302 temporary | The move is genuinely temporary, such as a seasonal page.                                                |
| 307 temporary | Like 302, preserving the request method.                                                                 |
| 410 gone      | The page is deliberately deleted with no replacement. Tells search engines to drop it faster than a 404. |

<Warning>
  Avoid chains. A redirecting to B redirecting to C wastes crawl budget and loses signal at each hop. When you move a page for the second time, update the original rule rather than adding another. Automatic slug redirects already do this for you.
</Warning>