How to find broken links on Shopify

Shopify will serve a beautiful 404 inside the theme while the nav, a leftover collection, and an app block still point at /products/deleted-handle.

Typical rot

• Handles. Rename a product or collection, forget the automatic redirect (Shopify can create one — people turn that off).
• Navigation + footer in Online Store → Navigation. Custom links are a graveyard.
• Theme app embeds injecting banners to last season’s landing.
• CDN images (cdn.shopify.com) after a theme copy. Images.
• Markets / languages. /en-ca/products/... vs /products/.... One works. The other is linked from an old email.

What you cannot scan

Checkout, customer account, and some app proxies are Shopify-hosted or gated. A 403/404 there is often not your theme. Scan the storefront: home, collections, products, blog, pages.

Workflow

1. Open the shop on the primary domain (not *.myshopify.com if you never send people there).
2. Page scan on home + one product + one collection. Side panel stays open while you click.
3. Crawl if the catalog is real.
4. Fix in admin (redirects list, navigation, theme editor). Recheck one URL.

Shopify’s own redirect table is the 301. Do not invent a theme snippet that JS-bounces. See redirect chains if someone already did.

Same idea as InSales in RU commerce: the storefront HTML is the source of truth, not the product spreadsheet.