AI Auto-Redirect FAQ
Answers to common questions about AI 404 redirects, matching quality, credits, safety controls, reversibility, and timing.
This FAQ covers the most common questions about AI Auto-Redirects.
Will the First Visitor to a Dead URL Get Redirected?
Not always. AI Auto-Redirects is asynchronous. Serpwise needs enough recent human 404 traffic to identify a recurring path, evaluate candidates, and create or queue a suggestion.
The first visitor to a brand-new dead URL may still see a 404. Once the scan runs and the suggestion is applied, later requests are redirected at the gateway.
Does Serpwise Redirect Everything to the Homepage?
No. Serpwise bans homepage fallback redirects for AI Auto-Redirects.
A clean 404 is better than a soft-404 homepage redirect when there is no close replacement. The AI is instructed to choose no good match instead of guessing.
Can AI Overwrite Manual Redirects?
No. Manual and CSV redirects have priority. If a source path already has a redirect, AI skips it instead of updating it.
This keeps AI Auto-Redirects additive and reversible.
What Signals Does the AI Use?
Serpwise uses a mix of deterministic and AI-assisted signals:
- Prior crawl history for the dead path, including title, description, and page content where available
- URL slug tokens from the missing path
- Search Console queries and page metrics when connected
- Semantic similarity to live indexed pages
- Path and section overlap
- Locale consistency
- Target freshness, status code, and indexability
The final AI decision is constrained to supplied candidate URLs. It cannot invent a target outside the candidate list.
Why Did a Suggestion Go to Review Instead of Applying Automatically?
The confidence score was below your auto-apply threshold, or auto-apply is turned off.
You can lower the threshold to apply more aggressively, but most teams start conservatively and review the first batch before increasing automation.
Why Was No Suggestion Created?
Common reasons:
- The path did not meet the minimum human-hit threshold
- The traffic looked like bots or scanner traffic
- The path matched exploit patterns such as
.php,/wp-admin,/.env, or/.git - The URL looked like a legitimate 404, search page, cart, checkout, or faceted URL
- No live target passed the quality and safety checks
- The best match was below the minimum confidence floor
Can I Use Temporary Redirects?
Yes. The default status code is 301, but the domain setting can be changed to 302, 307, or 308.
Use 301 for permanent replacements and site migrations. Use temporary codes only when the old URL may return or when method preservation matters.
What Does Bulk Migration Detection Do?
When many 404s follow the same structural pattern, Serpwise can suggest one regex redirect instead of many exact redirects.
For example, if old blog URLs moved from /blog/* to /articles/*, Serpwise can queue one regex suggestion and show the matched paths it covers.
How Are Credits Charged?
AI redirect evaluations use credits. The dashboard shows the credit cost before you enable or run the feature, and ledger entries are recorded against the generated redirect suggestion.
See Credits & AI Pricing for credit packages and ledger behavior.
Who Receives the Daily Digest?
Organization owners and admins receive the digest when domain notifications are enabled and there was AI redirect activity for the domain.
The digest is grouped by domain and separates automatically applied redirects from suggestions that need review.
Can I Turn It Off?
Yes. You can disable AI Auto-Redirects per domain. Existing AI-created redirects remain active unless you disable or revert them.
To review everything before it goes live, leave AI Auto-Redirects enabled but turn off auto-apply.
How Do I Roll Back AI Redirects?
Use the AI source filter in the Redirects table or the Bulk revert AI redirects action.
Bulk revert affects AI-created redirects only. Manual redirects and CSV imports are not changed.
What Happens If a Target Later Breaks?
If broken-target re-validation is enabled, Serpwise checks AI-created redirect targets after they go live. When a target later returns 404, becomes noindex, or otherwise stops looking valid, Serpwise disables the redirect and flags it in the digest.