32% of Magento Business Websites Have Redirect Problems or Broken Links vs 5.4% on Wix

A customer clicks "Services" in a dental practice's menu. The page loads, but first the browser is sent from an old address to a new one, because the menu still points where the page lived three redesigns ago. On another website, a shopper clicks a product in a blog post and lands on an error page, because the product was renamed last season. Neither business knows it is happening.

These leftovers matter because every website changes over time: new themes, renamed products, deleted galleries, a move to a new platform. Links that go through a redirect make pages slower and harder for search engines to read, and a broken link sends a visitor to an error page and wastes any value other websites were passing through it. How many of those leftovers pile up differs sharply from one platform to the next.

The gap between platforms is wide. 32% of Magento business websites have a redirect problem or broken link in their first 3 pages, against 5.4% on Wix, nearly six times the rate. WordPress (18.8%) and Shopify (18.2%) sit close to the 16% average, the hosted builders Wix, Webflow and Squarespace are below it, and the online store platforms other than Shopify range from 25.8% to 32%.

We took 25,708 reachable business websites from Google business listings across dozens of US industries and checked them on September 23 and 24, 2026. Most websites were checked at 3 pages and a subset at up to 20 pages. We identified each website's platform and compared 13 platforms, from WordPress, the largest with 7,515 websites, to Webflow with 404; the industry comparisons use industries with at least 25 websites on a platform.

A redirect is an instruction that sends visitors from an old address to a new one. A website counts as having a redirect problem when a page links to one of the site's own addresses that redirects elsewhere, or when a redirect leads to another redirect (a chain) or back to itself (a loop). A broken link is a link to a page that returns an error, usually because the page was deleted or renamed. A website counts once, however many problems it has.

The 13 platforms fall into three groups. The online store platforms other than Shopify, Magento (32%), WooCommerce (30.8%), BigCommerce (30.3%), OpenCart (30%) and PrestaShop (25.8%), have the highest rates. WordPress (18.8%), Shopify (18.2%) and Drupal (18%) sit a little above the 16% average. The hosted builders Squarespace (14.3%), GoDaddy (11%), Webflow (8.9%) and Wix (5.4%) are below it, along with Joomla (9.9%).

The order lines up with two things: how often a website's addresses change, and who controls them. Online stores add, rename and retire products constantly, which creates far more changed addresses than a brochure website ever does. On Wix and Webflow, the platform runs the hosting and manages page addresses, and most edits happen in one editor. On WordPress and the self-hosted store platforms, themes, plugins and several people's edits accumulate over years, and so do links to old addresses.

Shopify is the exception among store platforms. At 18.2%, it has about the same rate as WordPress and well under the 25.8% to 32% of the other store platforms, which fits the way Shopify can add a redirect automatically when a product's address changes.

On 12 of the 13 platforms, the most common problem is the same: pages linking to the site's own old addresses, which then redirect. 16.5% of Shopify business websites and 14.7% of WordPress business websites have such links, against 3.8% on Wix. Redirect chains, where one redirect leads to another, are rare: 0.2% of WordPress and Webflow business websites have one.

On Shopify the pattern matches the way addresses are built. A product's address comes from its handle, the short name after /products/, so renaming a product changes its address, and Shopify's automatic redirect keeps old links working with an extra hop. The numbers line up: 2.3% of Shopify business websites have a broken link, less than half the 5.7% on WordPress, while 16.5% have links to redirecting addresses.

Squarespace is the exception. 9.8% of Squarespace business websites have a broken link and 6.2% a redirect problem, the only platform of the 13 where broken links are the bigger problem, and the second-highest broken-link rate after WooCommerce (13.2%). On Squarespace, the owner adds a redirect by hand in the URL Mappings settings when a page is deleted or renamed. Owners who skip that step leave links pointing at pages that no longer exist.

Most websites were checked at 3 pages. For the subset checked at up to 20 pages, the rate jumps on every platform. 50.5% of Squarespace business websites and 47% of WordPress business websites checked at that depth have a redirect problem or broken link, close to a coin flip.

The deeper you look, the more old links you find. Blog posts, galleries, product pages and footers written years ago carry the addresses of their time, and they sit further into a website than its homepage and main menu. Squarespace jumps the most, from 8.3% to 50.5%.

Wix stays the cleanest at depth too: its 17.3% is about a third of the Squarespace and WordPress rates, and Webflow's 27.6% is well under both.

Within each platform, the rate lines up with how often a type of business changes its website. On WordPress, bakery websites have a redirect problem or broken link 46.9% of the time, the highest of any industry and platform compared, followed by fashion stores (43.8%) and yoga studios (32.3%). Funeral homes (10.5%), veterinarians (13.3%) and roofers (13.4%) have the lowest WordPress rates.

The pattern repeats on every platform. The businesses at the top change their websites constantly: new menus and seasonal products at a bakery, new shades and collections at a beauty store, new galleries and packages at a wedding venue. Every page that is renamed or removed leaves links behind. The businesses at the bottom publish a set of service pages and leave them in place for years.

On Shopify, beauty stores (33.3%) have three times the rate of florists (11.1%), with mattress stores (24.4%) and furniture stores (21.4%) close behind. On Wix, no industry with at least 25 websites exceeds 11.6%, still below the 16% average for business websites.

Start with the most common problem, because it is also the easiest to fix. Run a free link checker on your website and filter for internal links that return a redirect. Update each one to point straight at the final address: on most websites that means the menu, the footer and a handful of old posts or product descriptions. Then fix broken links, and add a redirect for any deleted page that still gets visitors or links from other websites.

Make redirects part of every edit. On Squarespace, add a 301 redirect in URL Mappings whenever you delete or rename a page. On Webflow, add one in the redirects panel whenever you change a collection item's slug. On Shopify, check menus and blog posts after renaming products. On WordPress and the self-hosted store platforms, review your redirect list once a year so chains do not build up, and check more than your homepage: at 20 pages deep, nearly half of WordPress and Squarespace websites have a problem.

The biggest risk comes when you change platforms, because a move changes every page address at once. Map every old address with traffic or links to its new page before launch, and point each one at the matching page, not the homepage. Specialist seo migration services build that address map first, so your new website starts clean and keeps the rankings your old one earned.

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