Update Your Links' URL Redirect Feature

Published February 27, 2025 · GoTo.now Team

TL;DR - With GoTo.now's redirect feature, you can change where a short link points at any time - Even after it's been shared, posted, or printed. Update the destination once in your dashboard, and every copy of the link out in the world follows.

Key points

• A short link points at your long link, so the destination can be swapped anytime
• Fix broken links without reposting anything, anywhere
• Printed materials stay useful even when pages move
• Click stats stay attached to the same link through every change
• It's free with a GoTo.now account, and links never expire

Here's a scenario you've probably lived through: you share a link in twenty places, and then the page moves. Now you're hunting down every post, email, and PDF to fix it. The redirect feature exists so you never do that again. Let me show you how it works.

The one thing most people get backwards about short links

When you shorten a link, you're not compressing it. You're creating a new, separate link that points at the original. That direction matters, because the pointing can change.

The short link is the stable part - The thing you share, print, and post. The destination behind it is the flexible part. So when your page moves, you don't touch the short link at all. You just tell it to point somewhere new. Everyone who clicks the old link - From a tweet last year or a flyer on a corkboard - Lands on the new page automatically.

What editing a destination actually saves you

The value gets obvious the first time something changes on you. A few real situations:

• A product page moves. Your store software changed its URL structure. One edit, and every shared link works again.
• A promo ends. Point the "spring sale" link at your current offer instead of a dead page.
• You printed something. Menus, posters, packaging - Print advertising with a raw URL is frozen forever. With a short link, print stays editable.
• You made a typo. Linked the wrong page in a big campaign? Fix it quietly. Nobody ever knows.
• You rebrand. New domain, same links. Repoint everything in an afternoon.

Without redirects, every one of these means reposting, reprinting, or apologizing. With them, it's one field in a dashboard.

How to update a link, step by step

The whole flow takes under a minute:

1. Create your account and shorten a link at GoTo.now - It's free.
2. Share that short link wherever you want: social posts, emails, QR codes, print.
3. When the destination needs to change, open your dashboard and pick the link.
4. Paste the new destination URL and save.

From that second on, every click goes to the new page. There's no delay to wait out and no cache to fight. And because GoTo.now links never expire, a link you set up today can be redirected five years from now.

Your stats survive the change too

This part is easy to miss. If you fixed a moved page by creating a brand-new short link, you'd reset your click count to zero and lose the story of that campaign.

Editing the destination keeps everything on one link. The analytics keep flowing - Total clicks, countries, devices, referrers - Before and after the change, all in one place. Those numbers are private to you; they show up in your dashboard and nowhere else.

That makes redirects useful for testing, too. Run a link to landing page A for a week, then repoint it to page B. Same link, same traffic sources, two sets of results to compare.

QR codes get the same superpower

Every GoTo.now link comes with a QR code, and the code inherits the redirect feature. The printed pattern encodes the short link - Not the destination - So the squares never need to change.

That's why a code on product packaging can outlive three website redesigns. Scans are unlimited, the code keeps working, and you steer where it goes from your dashboard. Print once, update forever.

Why updating your links beats replacing them

Once you get used to editable links, sharing a raw URL starts to feel reckless - Like publishing something you can never take back. Because that's what it is.

The redirect feature turns every link you share into something you still control after it leaves your hands. Mistakes become cheap. Old campaigns become reusable. Printed stuff stops being a gamble. Shorten one link you've already shared somewhere, and the next time that page moves, you'll fix it in thirty seconds instead of thirty minutes.