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How Bulk Redirects work

For each incoming request, Cloudflare evaluates all URL redirects of each Bulk Redirect List that is enabled by a Bulk Redirect Rule.

If there is a match for a URL redirect according to the URL matching algorithm, the redirect action is performed immediately, according to the URL redirect configuration parameters. Cloudflare performs no further processing once a redirect action has been executed.

Matching the source URL of redirects

The following URL redirect parameters control the matching behavior between the request URL and source URLs of the configured (and enabled) URL redirects:

  • Subpath matching (default: false)

    • If true, the URL redirect will apply to all paths under the given source path. For example, consider the following source and target URLs of a URL redirect:

      — Source URL: https://example.com/foo/

      — Target URL: https://example.com/qux/

    • With this configuration and Subpath matching enabled, an incoming request to example.com/foo/bar will be redirected to https://example.com/qux/bar.

  • Include subdomains (default: false)

    • If true, the source URL hostname of the URL redirect will also apply to all its subdomains. For example, consider the following source and target URLs of a URL redirect:

      — Source URL: https://example.com/about

      — Target URL: https://example.com/newpage

    • With this configuration and Includes subdomains enabled, incoming requests to http://a.example.com/about and http://a.b.example.com/about would also match, in addition to the specified domain with no subdomain (https://example.com/about).

For detailed information on these parameters, refer to URL redirect parameters.

Configuring the path and query string behavior

The following parameters configure how Cloudflare determines the path and query string of the final target URL:

  • Preserve query string (default: false)

    • If true, the final target URL will keep the query string of the original request. For example, consider the following source and target URLs of a URL redirect:

      — Source URL: https://example.com/about

      — Target URL: https://example.com/newpage

    • With this configuration and Preserve query string enabled, an incoming request to http://example.com/about?q=term would be redirected to https://example.com/newpage?q=term. If Preserve query string is disabled, the same incoming request would be redirected to https://example.com/newpage.

  • Preserve path suffix (default: true)

    • Defines if the final target URL will include the parts of the request path that did not match the URL redirect's source URL.

    • When Subpath matching is enabled, the path that was not matched is copied over to the final target URL. For example, consider the following source and target URLs of a URL redirect:

      — Source URL: https://example.com/a/

      — Target URL: https://example.com/b/

    • An incoming request to https://example.com/a/foo will be redirected to https://example.com/b/foo.

    • If you set Preserve path suffix to false, the same request will still match the redirect, but it will be redirected to https://example.com/b/.

For detailed information on these parameters, refer to URL redirect parameters.

URL matching algorithm

The URL of an incoming request matches a URL redirect in a list if:

  1. The scheme (http or https) is the same as the source URL of the URL redirect definition. Source URLs with no scheme will match both http and https.

  2. The hostname is the same as the hostname in the source URL of the URL redirect definition. If Include subdomains is enabled, the subdomains of the hostname in the redirect definition will also match.

  3. The path is the same as the source URL. If Subpath matching is enabled, Cloudflare also considers the subpaths of the path in the URL redirect's source URL when determining if there is a match. For example, a URL redirect with its source URL defined as example.com/blog will also match requests to example.com/blog/foo and example.com/blog/bar.

Determining the URL redirect to apply

If multiple URL redirects can apply, then the redirect that wins is determined by the following rules:

  1. Given two URL redirects with Subpath matching enabled, the URL redirect with the most specific path wins over the other URL redirect.
    If there are two URL redirects with source URL paths /folder and /folder/subfolder, an incoming request for the /folder/subfolder/item URL path will match the second redirect (/folder/subfolder) because it is more specific.

  2. URL redirects with the exact hostname win over URL redirects with the Include subdomains option enabled.

  3. Given two URL redirects with Include subdomains enabled, the URL with the most specific domain wins over the other URL redirect.
    If there are two URL redirects with source URL hostnames bar.com and foo.bar.com, an incoming request to qux.foo.bar.com will match the second redirect (foo.bar.com) because it is more specific.

  4. URL redirects with a concrete scheme win over URL redirects that match both http and https schemes.

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