Vol. 03 · Field Guideswallowtail · redirect mappingupdated 2026 · 05 · 12
No. 01 · The Migration Problem
Every old URL
deserves a new home.
Upload two sitemaps. Get a clean redirect CSV. Stop losing rankings to 404s in the days after launch, when nobody's watching.
Map your redirectsno card · free up to 250 URLs
PLATE I · fig. aold → new
No. 02 · The Product
A live extract from a 4,200-URL marketing migration. Wildcards collapsed eight ways.
A real run, mid-flight. Not a screenshot.
| old | new | match | confidence | action | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /blog/2014/*612 urls | → | /journal/$1 | pattern | 0.96 | accept |
| /services/consulting | → | /work-with-us/consulting | exact | 1.00 | accept |
| /products/widget-blue | → | /shop/widget-blue | exact | 1.00 | accept |
| /contact-us | → | /contact | fuzzy | 0.91 | accept |
| /our-team-page | → | /about/team | fuzzy | 0.84 | review |
| /legacy-pricing | → | 3 candidates | low | 0.42 | manual |
showing 6 of 4,217 rowsmedian time to CSV · 4m 12s
No. 03 · The Method
Three passes, fewer surprises.
i. exact
Same path? Done.
If /about exists on the old site and the new site, it gets accepted with no review. About 60% of a typical migration ends here.
ii. fuzzy
Close path? Scored.
If /our-team-page looks like /about/team, the matcher gives it a confidence score from 0 to 1. Anything under 0.75 goes to a review queue. It never lands in your CSV unless you accept it.
iii. wildcards
600 similar URLs? One rule.
When the matcher spots a pattern, like 600 dated blog posts under /blog/2014/*, it collapses them into one capture group that maps the whole tree at once.
“
The point is not to ship a 30,000-row spreadsheet. The point is to ship eighty-two regex lines and sleep through Monday morning.
from the swallowtail field notes, vol. 02
Two sitemaps in.
One redirect file out.
no credit card · free up to 250 URLs