rank-math/delete-redirections permanently deletes redirections by ID. It refuses without confirm: true.
Prefer trashing. It does the same job and can be undone.
Before you run it
The rules and their hit history are unrecoverable, and any URL currently relying on one starts returning 404 the moment this completes — including URLs on other people’s sites that link to yours. rank-math/change-redirection-status with action=trash has the same effect and reverses in one call.
At a glance
| Ability | rank-math/delete-redirections |
| Toolset | Rank Math — toolset/rank-math |
| Group | Rank Math › Redirections & 404s |
| Requires | Rank Math SEO, active on the site |
| Capability | manage_options |
| Safety | Destructive — deletes stored values, and refuses to run without confirm: true |
| Repeatable | Idempotent — running it twice leaves the same result |
| Ships in | AcrossAI Abilities Manager 0.0.34 and later |
How it works
A redirection is a promise to everyone who ever linked to the old URL. Deleting it breaks that promise for links you cannot see and cannot fix — the inbound links on other sites, the bookmark somebody made, the citation in a document.
The hit count is the evidence for whether that matters, and it goes with the rule. Once deleted, there is no way to establish whether a URL was still being used.
So read the hit counts first. A rule with zero hits in a year is genuinely safe to remove; one with hundreds is doing real work regardless of how old it looks.
The legitimate case for permanent deletion is a rule that was wrong — a redirect created with a bad pattern that is catching URLs it should not. That one should go, and trashing it first still works.
Idempotent: deleting an ID that is already gone is a no-op.
Input
| Name | Type | Required | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
ids | array | Yes | The redirection IDs to delete. |
confirm | boolean | Yes — must be true | The irreversibility gate. Without it the call is refused before anything is touched. |
What comes back
| Name | Type | What it is |
|---|---|---|
deleted | array | The IDs removed. |
count | integer | How many. |
success | boolean | Whether the call completed. |
message | string | A one-line summary of what happened, suitable for showing a human. |
error_code | string | Present only on failure — a stable machine-readable reason, such as a missing field, a wrong field type or an unmet confirmation. |
Example
Ask your assistant:
Permanently delete redirect 44.
It resolves to one call:
{
"ability": "rank-math/delete-redirections",
"parameters": {
"ids": [44],
"confirm": true
}
}Worth knowing
- Read the hit count first. It is the only evidence, and it is deleted too.
- Trashing does the same job reversibly.
- Breaks inbound links you cannot see or fix.
- Idempotent.
Related abilities
- Change Rank Math Redirection Status — the reversible version
- Export Rank Math Redirections — take a copy before deleting
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AcrossAI Abilities Manager · AcrossAI MCP Manager
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