Bug Report – Rank Math Incorrectly Redirecting Valid Pages to Homepage

Dear Rank Math Support Team,

I am encountering a persistent issue with my website’s redirection settings in Rank Math, and I would appreciate your assistance in resolving it. Specifically, when I enable the redirection feature in Rank Math, accessing certain URLs, such as https://rehab-centers.citynsr.com/success-stories/mark, results in a redirect to the homepage. However, when I disable Rank Math’s redirection or specifically turn off the 301 redirection setting, the post works as expected.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the issue:

Post URL:
The post URL in question is https://rehab-centers.citynsr.com/mark (not under /success-stories/ anymore, since it was previously deleted). I recreated the post with the same slug after discovering the redirection issue in Search Console.

Expected Behavior:
The post should be accessible via https://rehab-centers.citynsr.com/mark, without redirection to the homepage.

Issue:

When Rank Math’s redirection feature is enabled, accessing https://rehab-centers.citynsr.com/success-stories/mark results in an automatic redirect to the homepage.
When I disable Rank Math redirections, the post loads correctly at https://rehab-centers.citynsr.com/mark.
When I specifically turn off the 301 redirection in Rank Math, it also works, but I cannot find any explicit redirection rule in Rank Math Redirections for this post.
I also tried resetting the redirection rules in Rank Math, but the issue persists.
Steps Taken:

I’ve purged cache in both LiteSpeed Cache and Rank Math.
I’ve tried multiple browsers and cleared browser cache, but the issue persists.
I’ve disabled Rank Math Redirection entirely, and this resolved the issue.
I’ve checked the Rank Math Redirections section but found no specific redirection rule for this post.
I have confirmed that the page was deleted before, and I created a new one after discovering this issue from Search Console.
Concerns:
I plan to create several more pages for success stories (6-10 in total), but I am concerned that Rank Math may apply the same redirection behavior to these new pages, causing issues again.

Request:
I would greatly appreciate your assistance in troubleshooting this. Specifically, I need help with:

Identifying why Rank Math redirects this post to the homepage when the redirection feature is enabled.
Resolving the issue without affecting future pages I create.
Ensuring that new posts in the success stories category or similar categories do not face the same problem.
I’ve already taken all possible troubleshooting steps, including deactivating the redirection feature, clearing all caches, and resetting the redirection rules, but the issue persists when redirection is turned on.
Rank Math Incorrectly Redirecting Valid Pages to Homepage

I have encountered a redirection issue in Rank Math, where enabling “Redirect 404 to Homepage” wrongly redirects valid pages to the homepage in (my case it was a post) instead of displaying the correct content.

Issue Details:
When “Redirect 404 to Homepage” is enabled in Rank Math → General Settings → Redirections:

A valid page (e.g., /success-stories/mark) redirects to the homepage instead of loading correctly.
However, another URL (/mark) for the same page works fine.
When I change “Fallback Behavior” to “Default 404”:

The page (/success-stories/mark) starts working correctly.
This proves that the page exists and is not a real 404, but Rank Math was misidentifying it.
No custom redirections exist for this URL in Rank Math → Redirections.

No conflicts found with other plugins, and the issue persists even after disabling the cache.

Flushing permalinks does not resolve the issue.

Expected Behavior:
If a page exists, it should load normally regardless of the “404 Redirection” setting.
Rank Math should only redirect real 404 pages to the homepage (if enabled), but not valid, existing pages.
Possible Cause:
Rank Math’s 404 detection system seems to be mistakenly identifying some valid pages as missing, especially when URLs have different slugs.
This might be due to how Rank Math handles canonical URLs and fallback redirections.
Steps to Reproduce:
Create a page (e.g., /success-stories/mark).
Enable “Redirect 404 to Homepage” in Rank Math → General Settings → Redirections.
Visit /success-stories/mark → It redirects to the homepage instead of displaying the page.
Change Fallback Behavior to “Default 404” → The page starts working correctly.
Suggested Fix:
Update Rank Math’s redirection logic to properly detect real 404 pages.
Ensure that existing pages are not affected by the 404 fallback redirection.
Please let me know if this issue is being addressed in an update.

Thank you!

Akhilesh Sharma