This article explains, why it's important to set up redirects when migrating from a former Locator to the Locator & Pages product.
What is a redirect?
URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened.
Suggestion
When moving to the Locator & Pages solution from a former Locator, it is important that redirects are implemented for the old URLs of your previous Store Locator. After migrating from one platform to another, there is an almost guaranteed chance that the old URLs will still be indexed on Google and other search engines. To avoid end-users clicking on those outdated links and being led to an inactive page, it is important to implement redirects leading to the associated URLs of the new solution.
The idea is to make sure that an end-user trying to access this old URL (https://mydomain.com/locator/OLD_LINK) will be redirected to the new URL in the new Locator solution (https://mydomain.com/locator/NEW_LINK).
These redirect rules must be configured on the web server level where the traffic for the previous Locator product was being handled. It is important to note that, this configuration must be done by the web admins. Redirect setups are out of scope of the Locator & Pages product.
Read next: How to remove Hashbangs (#!) from Locator URL?