Blogger Custom Redirects for Deleted and Renamed Posts

You renamed an old post to fix its URL, or deleted three thin articles during a clean-up, and now Search Console shows a growing list of "Not found (404)" pages. Every one of those broken URLs had backlinks, bookmarks or search traffic, and right now all of it lands on an error page. Blogger custom redirects fix this in a few minutes, but only if you set them up the right way.

I have cleaned up redirect lists on dozens of Blogger sites, and the same handful of mistakes come up again and again. This guide shows where the setting lives, how to fill in each field, when to choose permanent over temporary, and which redirects you should not create at all.

What Blogger custom redirects do

A redirect tells browsers and search engines that a page has moved. When someone visits the old address, Blogger sends them to the new one automatically. A permanent redirect returns a 301 status, which tells Google to transfer the old page's ranking signals to the new URL and eventually drop the old address from results. A temporary redirect returns a 302, which says the move is short-term and the original URL should stay indexed.

Blogger's built-in tool only handles redirects within your own blog. You cannot use it to send visitors to a different domain. That is fine for nearly every real case, since what you usually need is to point an old post at its new home, or at the closest related post.

How to set up Blogger custom redirects step by step

1. Open your dashboard and go to Settings, then scroll down to the section called Errors and redirects.
2. Click Custom redirects and then New redirect.
3. Fill in the From field with the old path only, starting with a slash. For example: /2023/04/best-free-fonts.html. Do not include your domain, and do not include anything after .html such as ?m=1.
4. Fill in the To field with the new path, again starting with a slash, such as /2024/02/free-fonts-for-blogger.html.
5. Turn on Permanent if the old URL is gone for good. Leave it off only for short-term moves.
6. Click OK, then Save. The list does not save until you click the save button at the bottom of the dialog, which is the step people miss most often.
7. Test it by opening the old URL in a private browser window. You should land on the new post within a second.

Blogger handles the mobile ?m=1 version automatically, so one redirect covers both desktop and mobile visitors.

Finding the URLs that need redirects

Open Search Console, go to Pages, and look under "Not found (404)". Export the list, then sort it by which URLs have backlinks or past clicks. In the Performance report, filter by page to see which old URLs earned impressions in the last 12 months. Those are the ones worth redirecting first. A URL with no links, no traffic and no useful replacement can be left as a 404.

When to use permanent and when to use temporary

When in doubt, ask yourself whether the old URL will ever come back. If the answer is no, the redirect should be permanent. Google treats a long-running temporary redirect much like a permanent one in the end, but it can take months to get there, and you lose ranking in the meantime.

Why redirecting every dead post to the homepage backfires

A popular shortcut is to send every deleted URL to the homepage, on the idea that any traffic is better than an error page. I strongly advise against it.

Google treats a redirect to an unrelated page as a "soft 404", meaning it ignores the redirect and drops the ranking signals anyway. Visitors who clicked a link expecting a specific recipe or tutorial land on your front page with no idea where to go, and most leave within seconds. You end up with the same lost rankings plus a worse visitor experience.

Redirect only when there is a genuinely related replacement page. If a deleted post has no close match, it is better to let it return a 404 and make sure your custom 404 page is helpful. You can edit that message in the same Errors and redirects section, and a short note with links to your most popular posts and your search box does far more good than a forced redirect.

Keeping your redirect list clean

A redirect list grows quietly, and a messy one causes problems of its own. Check these points every few months:

• No chains. If post A redirects to B, and you later move B to C, update A to point straight to C. Each extra hop slows the page and weakens the signal.
• No loops. A redirect from A to B and another from B to A will break both pages. Blogger does not warn you about this.
• Update internal links. A redirect is a safety net, not a replacement for fixing your own links. Edit older posts so they link straight to the new URL, using the habits in internal linking in Blogger posts.
• Resubmit your sitemap after a large batch of changes so Google finds the new URLs faster. The steps are in submitting your Blogger sitemap to Search Console.

Most redirect work happens during content refreshes, so it pairs naturally with the process in updating old blog posts so they rank again. Plan the redirects before you change any URLs, not after the 404s pile up.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a Blogger redirect take to work?

For visitors, it works as soon as you save it, usually within a minute. For Google, the new URL typically replaces the old one in results within a few days to a few weeks, depending on how often your blog is crawled.

Can I redirect a Blogger post to another website?

Not with the custom redirects tool, which only accepts paths on your own blog. If you are moving the whole blog to a new domain, you need a different approach, such as keeping the old blog live with notices or using a template-level script, and neither passes signals as cleanly as a server redirect.

Should I delete old Blogger posts or redirect them?

If an old post has a better, closely related replacement, redirect it permanently. If it is thin and has no traffic or links, you can delete it and let it return a 404. Posts that still get visits are often worth updating instead of removing.