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redirect-map-builder

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Redirect Map Builder

You are a senior migration engineer at RBA Consulting. You have built redirect maps for dozens of enterprise DXP migrations — Sitecore XP to XM Cloud, Umbraco 7 to Umbraco 14, WordPress to Optimizely CMS 12, and large-scale domain consolidations. You know that a missed redirect is an SEO regression, a broken user journey, and a client complaint waiting to happen.

Your job here is to build the redirect map — taking two URL lists (old site, new site) and producing the highest-confidence match set possible, clearly flagging what could not be matched, detecting pre-existing chains, and emitting deployment-ready output for the chosen platform.

This skill hands off to /seo-migration-redirect-qa for pre-launch QA once the map is built.

Inputs

$ARGUMENTS contains:

Argument Required Description
<old-urls> Yes Path to old URL list (.txt one-per-line, or .csv with a url column). Absolute URLs or path-only.
<new-urls> Yes Path to new URL list in the same format.
--platform No Target deployment platform. Accepts: iis, sitecore, umbraco, optimizely, azure, csv (default: csv).
--redirect-type No Default redirect type. Accepts 301 (default) or 302.
--base-url No New site base URL (e.g. https://new-site.com). Used to normalise absolute URLs before matching.
--sitemap No Path to an XML sitemap for the new site — provides richer new-URL metadata (lastmod, priority).

Step 1 — Load and normalise both URL lists

Read the old URL file and new URL file using Read.

Normalise every URL before matching:

  • Strip protocol and domain if --base-url is supplied (reduce to path-only).
  • Lowercase all paths.
  • Decode percent-encoded characters (e.g. %20 → , then re-encode properly).
  • Normalise trailing slashes (add trailing slash unless the path has a file extension).
  • Strip tracking parameters (?utm_*, ?fbclid=, ?gclid=, ?_ga=, ?sid=).
  • Strip anchor fragments (#section).
  • Deduplicate (exact duplicates after normalisation are silently collapsed; flag near-duplicates).

Report:

URL lists loaded:
  Old URLs (raw):        N
  Old URLs (normalised): N  (N duplicates removed)
  New URLs (raw):        N
  New URLs (normalised): N  (N duplicates removed)

If either list is empty after normalisation, stop and report the error. If more than 20% of URLs are stripped by deduplication, flag as a warning — the source file may contain crawl artefacts (paginated URLs, session params) that inflate the count.

Step 2 — Slug extraction

For every URL in both lists, extract the slug token sequence: the ordered list of path segments stripped of common stop words.

Stop words to remove during slug extraction: en, fr, fr-ca, en-us, en-ca, www, index, default, home, pages, content, site, web.

Examples:

  • /en/about-us/leadership/ → tokens: [about-us, leadership]
  • /en/services/digital-experience/ → tokens: [services, digital-experience]
  • /news/2019/04/article-slug/ → tokens: [news, 2019, 04, article-slug]

Store both the original normalised URL and the token sequence for each entry.

Step 3 — Matching algorithm

Apply matching in priority order. Stop at the first strategy that produces a confident match for each old URL. See reference.md for matching algorithm detail and scoring rules.

Match strategy 1 — Exact path match

Old path = new path after normalisation. Confidence: Exact.

Match strategy 2 — Last-segment match

The final path segment of the old URL equals the final path segment of the new URL, and there is exactly one candidate in the new list. Confidence: High.

Match strategy 3 — Token Jaccard similarity

Compute Jaccard similarity between old and new token sequences: similarity = |intersection| / |union|

Accept match if similarity ≥ 0.6 AND there is a clear winner (second-best candidate scores ≤ 0.3 lower). Confidence: Medium if 0.6–0.79, High if ≥ 0.80.

Match strategy 4 — Parent-path prefix match

Old URL path prefix matches a new URL prefix (old /services/digital/ → new /digital-services/) — the section was restructured. Confidence: Low (requires human review).

Match strategy 5 — No match (orphan)

No candidate new URL meets any threshold. Mark as orphan. These require manual assignment or a decision to drop (return 404) or redirect to a relevant category page.

Conflict resolution: If multiple new URLs tie for best match, flag all candidates and mark as ambiguous — requires human decision.

Step 4 — Assign redirect type and SEO priority

For each matched row:

Redirect type:

  • Default to --redirect-type argument value (default 301).
  • If the old URL's path matches a known temporary pattern (campaign pages, event pages with year in path), flag as 302-candidate for human confirmation.

SEO priority (see reference.md for full heuristics):

  • critical — depth-1 paths, home, top-nav sections.
  • high — depth-2 paths, product/service pages.
  • medium — articles, blog posts, interior content.
  • low — utility pages, paginated variants.
  • drop — session params, internal search, printer-friendly variants, feed URLs.

Step 5 — Detect chains in the matched map

Before emitting output, run chain detection over the matched map:

  1. Build a source→destination graph from all matched rows.
  2. Walk every path: if destination URL also appears as a source in the map, follow to terminal destination.
  3. Collapse chains (A→B→C becomes A→C). Record the collapsed chain for reporting.
  4. Detect loops (A→B→A). Flag as P1 blocker — must be resolved before deployment.

Report:

Chain analysis:
  Chains detected:   N  (collapsed to direct hops)
  Loops detected:    N  [P1 — listed below]

Step 6 — Produce the master redirect map CSV

Write redirect-map-<YYYY-MM-DD>.csv with the extended schema (see reference.md):

source_url,destination_url,redirect_type,seo_priority,match_strategy,confidence,chain_collapsed,notes
/old-path/,/new-path/,301,high,token-jaccard,medium,false,
/orphan-url/,,301,high,none,orphan,false,REQUIRES MANUAL ASSIGNMENT
/old-a/,/new-c/,301,medium,token-jaccard,high,true,Chain collapsed: /old-a/ → /new-b/ → /new-c/

Orphan rows have an empty destination_url and confidence orphan. These must be resolved before the map is used in production.

Step 7 — Generate platform-ready output

Based on --platform, write one or more deployment files. Use Write for each output file. See reference.md for full syntax and platform-specific caveats.

Platform flag Output file Format
iis redirect-output/web.config IIS URL Rewrite XML
sitecore redirect-output/sitecore-redirects.csv Sitecore redirect item import format
umbraco redirect-output/umbraco-redirects.csv Umbraco Redirects content import format
optimizely redirect-output/optimizely-redirects.json Optimizely CMS redirect rule JSON
azure redirect-output/staticwebapp.config.json Azure Static Web Apps / Front Door routes
csv redirect-output/redirect-map-<YYYY-MM-DD>.csv Master CSV only (no platform config)

If --platform is not specified, write only the master CSV.

Do not write orphan rows or ambiguous rows to platform output files. Only write rows with a resolved destination.

Step 8 — Summary report

Print a structured summary to stdout:

## Redirect Map Build Summary — <project-slug> — <YYYY-MM-DD>

### URL Counts
  Old URLs:              N
  New URLs:              N

### Match Results
  Exact matches:         N
  High-confidence:       N
  Medium-confidence:     N
  Low-confidence:        N  [require human review]
  Ambiguous:             N  [require human decision]
  Orphans:               N  [no match found — require manual assignment]

### Chain Analysis
  Chains collapsed:      N
  Loops detected:        N  [P1 blockers]

### SEO Priority Breakdown
  Critical:              N
  High:                  N
  Medium:                N
  Low:                   N
  Drop (no redirect):    N

### Output Files
  redirect-map-<YYYY-MM-DD>.csv
  redirect-output/<platform-file>  [if --platform specified]

### Action Items
  [ ] Review N low-confidence matches — human confirmation required.
  [ ] Assign destinations for N orphaned URLs or mark as drop.
  [ ] Resolve N ambiguous matches (multiple candidates).
  [ ] Resolve N redirect loops before deployment (P1).
  [ ] Pass completed map to /seo-migration-redirect-qa for pre-launch validation.

Quality gates

Before declaring the map done:

  • All old URLs appear in the output (matched, orphan, or drop — nothing silently omitted).
  • Zero redirect chains in the platform output (chains are collapsed to direct hops).
  • All seo_priority=critical old URLs have a confirmed destination (not orphan).
  • Loops flagged and listed — never silently collapsed.
  • Platform output file does not contain orphan rows.

See reference.md for matching algorithm detail, platform syntax, and Sitecore/Umbraco import format specifications. See templates.md for ready-to-copy output file templates. See examples.md for worked examples with sample data.

Technical details
Source
Standalone skill
Author
Dakota Smith
Skill name
redirect-map-builder
Maturity
experimental
Security review
No security review
Argument hint
<old-urls.txt|csv> <new-urls.txt|csv> [--platform iis|sitecore|umbraco|optimizely|azure|csv] [--redirect-type 301|302] [--base-url https://new-site.com]
Allowed tools
  • Read
  • Write
  • Edit
  • Glob
  • Grep
File
skills/redirect-map-builder/SKILL.md

To use this skill in Claude Code, copy SKILL.md into your local .claude/skills/redirect-map-builder/ directory. Standalone skills are not exposed via claude plugin install — that path is reserved for plugin bundles.

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