Magento SEO rewrites

Magento’s url rewrite function is one of those behind the scenes actors that rarely get attention until something goes wrong.
When things do go wrong, sometimes the only thing that will fix things are to truncate(empty) the core_url_rewrites table in the DB.
You may have some issues with duplicate url path’s causing your rewrites table to grow exponentially, or something else that’s causing this table to get overly large (and slow).
This can be scary, but hopefully this post will help you out.
If you open your database in either phpMyAdmin or Sequel Pro, the core_url_rewrites table is the one you are looking for.
url-rewrite
Once you have selected this table, export it as a csv file.
Open the exported table in open office and you should be able to sort all the rows by id_path.
System rewrites will be in the format of either product/19320 or 30905000_1440306051.
Once you get rid of all the system url rewrites, all that are left are the custom ones you have added.
Save this spreadsheet in open office in csv format.
**Before truncating table, you are going to want to do a full DB dump just in case something goes wrong.**
Once that’s completed, truncate the core_url_rewrites table.
Then login to your Magento store admin and reindex the Catalog URL Rewrites Index in System > Index Management.
Once this is completed, import your saved spreadsheet into the core_url_rewrites table.
Once import is completed, your core_ur_rewrites table should be back to it’s former self.

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