Does a static front page create a duplicate URL at its page slug?
No. Once a page is chosen under Settings → Reading as the homepage, WordPress treats the site root as that page's only address. A request for its old slug, such as /home/, is answered with a 301 to /, and every link, canonical tag and sitemap entry core generates uses the root.
What changes when you pick a front page
A page called Home is created like any other and starts life at /home/. The moment you select it as the static homepage, three things change, and none of them needs a plugin:
- Its permalink becomes the root. Wherever WordPress asks for that page's link, in menus, page lists, the block editor's link search and the "View page" button, it gets
https://example.com/instead of/home/. - Its slug address redirects. Core's canonical redirect checks whether the page being requested is the front page and, if so, sends the visitor to the home URL. The ID form
/?page_id=12is redirected the same way. - Its canonical tag names the root. The canonical link on single pages is built from the permalink, so the homepage declares
https://example.com/as canonical.
Check it yourself:
curl -sI https://example.com/home/ | grep -iE "^(HTTP|location)"
You should see a 301 and a Location header with the bare domain.
The slug does not disappear from the database. If you later choose a different front page, the old one goes back to living at /home/.
The Posts page gets one address too
The same Reading setting lets you name a Posts page, typically Blog. That page stops showing its own content and becomes the index of your latest posts at its slug, for example /blog/. The ID form of its address redirects to the pretty one, so there is again a single URL.
What does not happen automatically: if your site used to show latest posts on the homepage and you switch to a static front page, the post index moves from / to /blog/. The paginated addresses /page/2/, /page/3/ at the root stop listing posts. Nothing links to them any more, but they may be indexed. Leave them to drop out, or redirect /page/(number)/ to /blog/page/(number)/ if they had traffic.
Duplicates that are not WordPress's doing
If you see two homepage URLs in Search Console, the cause is nearly always one of these, not the front page setting:
| Variant | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
http:// and https://, or www and non-www | Server answers on more than one host or scheme | One 301 to the preferred version at the server |
/index.php or /index.html | A link somewhere uses the file name | Core redirects /index.php to /; remove any stray index.html file |
/?utm_source=... or /?ref=... | Campaign and referral links | Nothing; the canonical tag points to the root |
/home-2/ or a builder preview URL | A second page was created as a copy of the homepage | Delete or redirect the copy |
/home/ returning 200 | A caching layer stored the page before it became the front page | Purge the cache |
The last row is the only time the slug address really does serve content: the redirect comes from WordPress, so a full-page cache that still holds an old copy can answer first. Clearing it restores the redirect.
What to do with internal links
Because core hands out the root URL for the front page, links created through the menu editor or the link picker are already correct. Hand-typed links are the exception. A button pointing at /home/ works, but it sends every click and every crawl through a redirect.
Search your content, widgets and theme options for the old slug and replace it with /. Logos are a common culprit in page builders, where the link was typed once and forgotten.
The homepage should also appear exactly once in your XML sitemap, as the root. WordPress's own sitemap lists the front page by its permalink, which is the root. If you find /home/ listed in any sitemap, a custom filter or stale cache is involved. Homepage titles, description and robots settings in Hydrogen SEO are on the Homepage screen, separate from the page's own SEO fields.
Common questions
Should I rename the front page slug from "home" to something else?
There is no need. Visitors and crawlers never see it, because the address redirects to the root and all generated links use the root.
Does the redirect from /home/ pass link value?
It is a 301, the standard permanent redirect, so links that point at the slug address are credited to the homepage.
Why does my homepage title show the page's name instead of the site name?
That is a title setting, not a URL issue. Core uses the site title and tagline for the front page; a theme or SEO plugin setting can replace it with the page title.