Active only means it was stored, not that it executed
The rule remains in the list where you left it. Its toggle shows Active, the dashboard is green, and the address still opens the previous page. Nothing in the interface looks wrong, because nothing there is. Active means the setting was accepted and is cleared to run; it says nothing about whether any request ever arrived at it.
Someone may have responded before your turn
Rules products operate in a set order, and a redirect ends evaluation the moment it triggers. Two settings that cover the same address are not a tie: the first one reached wins, and the product order determines which that is. Older forwarding settings yield to the current products, which seems like welcome news until the new pattern fails — then the old one activates, the visitor lands somewhere nobody configured this week, and the symptom stops resembling a redirect problem at all. Checking the order is faster than changing either one.
Your request may never reach your zone
There are three ways to fall outside your own zone, and they look identical from the inside. A record left unproxied gives visitors the origin address, so they connect directly to it and your edge settings are never consulted. A zone whose nameservers were never changed at the registrar remains unresolved: everything you set up is real, and none of it is live. And a hostname onboarded to a platform that fronts it with a zone of its own may leave that platform responding first, with your configuration a note nobody reads. A temporary rule on a path nothing serves, asked for once with a plain request, separates all three in about a minute.
Matching is where most of an afternoon goes, and one quirk accounts for more of it than the rest together. A wildcard is compared against the whole address, the query string included, so a pattern that does not end open will skip any request carrying parameters. That is exactly what happens when you append something to beat the browser cache: the cache-buster defeats the pattern instead, the page loads normally, and you assume the rule is broken. Operators vary in whether they care about capitals, which turns a path copied from a design document into a rule that matches nothing. Bulk lists act the other way round and ignore parameters entirely, but subpath and subdomain coverage stay disabled unless switched on, and a list that no rule activates does nothing at all.
The full write-up, with every step and what each answer resolves: bulk redirect list across domains
The order is what rescues the evening: did it arrive, did the pattern cover it, did something answer sooner, and are you reading a plain query rather than a browser tab that may be showing you yesterday. Each question is resolved once, and the one that returns wrong is the one to repair.