undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Let your business shine with Listings AI
    Moz Local

    Let your business shine with Listings AI

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. My old URL's are still indexing when I have redirected all of them, why is this happening?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

My old URL's are still indexing when I have redirected all of them, why is this happening?

Technical SEO
5
8
1.3k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • One2OneDigital
    One2OneDigital Subscriber last edited by Mar 3, 2015, 12:33 PM

    I have built a new website and have redirected all my old URL's to their new ones but for some reason Google is still indexing the old URL's.

    Also, the page authority for all of my pages has dropped to 1 (apart from the homepage) but before they were between 12 to 15. Can anyone help me with this?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • MonicaOConnor
      MonicaOConnor last edited by Mar 30, 2015, 11:39 AM Mar 30, 2015, 11:39 AM

      It can take months for Google to start deindexing old URLs.

      Have you done a search in Google to see what pages they are still indexing? You can type in site:"Your Website" and it will give you the full results of URLs that are indexed. If there are any that shouldn't be, you can fetch and render them in GWT to force Google to crawl the 301 redirect, which should expedite the process. I am sure you submitted a new sitemap once you made all of your changes, but, if you haven't that could also help speed up the process.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dr-Pete
        Dr-Pete Staff last edited by Mar 24, 2015, 7:47 PM Mar 24, 2015, 7:47 PM

        Our data in OSE can lag a bit, but I'm concerned that you're seeing the same thing in Google. Is it possible to provide an example URL?

        When you say "Google is still indexing the old URLs", can you tell me exactly how you're measuring that (I find "indexing" means a lot of things to a lot of different people). It's not uncommon for both the old and new version to be stuck in the index for a while, and that's not always a bad sign. It can be, but it might not be (I realize that's not terribly helpful).

        Have you double-checked some of these redirects with a header checker? It's amazing how often a redirect is supposedly in place but isn't working properly, is producing multiple hops, etc.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • topic:timeago_earlier,21 days
        • One2OneDigital
          One2OneDigital Subscriber @RyanPurkey last edited by Mar 3, 2015, 3:16 PM Mar 3, 2015, 3:15 PM

          Thanks for your help Ryan but we updated our website 2 months ago and there still has been no results, so we are quite concerned.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • RyanPurkey
            RyanPurkey @One2OneDigital last edited by Mar 3, 2015, 3:10 PM Mar 3, 2015, 3:10 PM

            Right. That's due to updating after the Open Site Explorer update. Once Moz recrawls your site it will apply the changes and you'll see the numbers as they were previously.  It sounds like you've made these changes VERY recently. Any redirection of pages (even if they're on the same domain) take a bit of time to be fully recognized by search engines and Moz's OSE.

            One2OneDigital 1 Reply Last reply Mar 3, 2015, 3:15 PM Reply Quote 2
            • One2OneDigital
              One2OneDigital Subscriber @RyanPurkey last edited by Mar 3, 2015, 3:06 PM Mar 3, 2015, 3:06 PM

              Thank you for the responses but we aren't changing to a new domain, we have update our old website and changed a few URL's and redirected them but Moz is saying that there aren't any links on the page when there are and the page authority apart from the homepage is 1?

              RyanPurkey 1 Reply Last reply Mar 3, 2015, 3:10 PM Reply Quote 0
              • paints-n-design
                paints-n-design last edited by Mar 3, 2015, 2:01 PM Mar 3, 2015, 2:01 PM

                If you have redirected the URLs correctly you should fatch the homepage as Google in WMT and send them including all refereing links. the new URLs are pretty fast in SERPs than.

                The rest is like Ryan Purkey said - thumb up

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • RyanPurkey
                  RyanPurkey last edited by Mar 3, 2015, 1:02 PM Mar 3, 2015, 1:02 PM

                  How recently have you made these changes? Have you also utilized the Change of Address tool in Google Webmaster Tools?  PA changes per OSE update, so if you ran these changes after the last update, you won't see new numbers until the next release: http://moz.com/products/api/updates (March 11th)  Cheers!

                  One2OneDigital 1 Reply Last reply Mar 3, 2015, 3:06 PM Reply Quote 3
                  • 1 / 1
                  1 out of 8
                  • First post
                    1/8
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  Browse Questions

                  Explore more categories

                  • Moz Tools

                    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                  • SEO Tactics

                    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                  • Community

                    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                  • Digital Marketing

                    Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                  • Research & Trends

                    Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                  • Support

                    Connect on product support and feature requests.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • moz46y

                    Reusing an already 301 redirected URL for a very important keyword

                    301 redirect 301 redirects

                    I have a question about reusing an already 301 redirected URL Till now I never reused an URLs that has been already redirected with a 301 redirect. However, I just started working on a website where in past they created a lot of 301 redirects without thinking about the future, and now certain URLs, that are currently redirected with a 301, would be very useful (exact match) and needed (for some of the most important keywords for this specific business), to maintain an optimal, homogeneous and "beautiful" URL structure. Has any of you ever reused a URL that was previously redirected with a 301 redirect? If yes what are your experiences with it? Can content on the reused URL (that was previously 301 redirected and than the redirect removed) normally rank if the page is reestablished and the redirect is removed (and you do great content, on page, internal linking, backlinking, .... ) or is such an URL risky / not recommended / "burned" forever and not recommended to be reused again... especially for very important keywords since it present the exact match ?! Thank you very much for all your help! Regards

                    Technical SEO | Jan 23, 2024, 5:39 PM | moz46y
                    0
                  • RodneyRiley

                    What's the best way to handle product filter URLs?

                    I've been researching and can't find a clear cut answer. Imagine you have a product category page e.g. domain/jeans You've a lot of options as to how to filter the results domain/jeans?=ladies,skinny,pink,10 or domain/jeans/ladies-skinny-pink-10 or domain/jeans/ladies/skinny?=pink,10 And in this how do you handle titles, breadcrumbs etc. Is the a way you prefer to handle filters and why do you do it that way? I'm trying to make my mind up as some very big names handle this differently e.g. http://www.next.co.uk/shop/gender-women-category-jeans/colour-pink-fit-skinny-size-10r VS https://www.matalan.co.uk/womens/shop-by-category/jeans?utf8=✓&[facet_filter][meta.tertiary_category][Skinny]=on&[facet_filter][variants.meta.size][Size+10]=on&[facet_filter][meta.master_colour][Midwash]=on&[facet_filter][min_current_price][gte]=6.0&[facet_filter][min_current_price][lte]=18.0&per=36&sort=

                    Technical SEO | Jul 12, 2017, 10:55 AM | RodneyRiley
                    0
                  • thinkLukeSEO

                    Backlinks that go to a redirected URL

                    Hey guys, just wondering, my client has 3 websites, 2 of 3 will be closed down and the domains will be permanently redirected to the 1 primary domain - however they have some high quality backlinks pointing the domains that will be redirected. How does this effective SEO? Domain One (primary - getting redesign and rebuilt) - not many backlinks
                    Domain Two (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks
                    Domain Three (will redirect to Domain One) - has quality backlinks When the new website is launched on Domain One I will contact the backlink providers and request they update their URL - i assume that would be the best.

                    Technical SEO | Feb 21, 2023, 1:08 PM | thinkLukeSEO
                    0
                  • Rignite

                    Should I noindex my blog's tag, category, and author pages

                    Hi there, Is it a good idea to no index tag, category, and author pages on blogs? The tag pages sometimes have duplicate content.  And the category and author pages aren't really optimized for any search term. Just curious what others think. Thanks!

                    Technical SEO | Oct 10, 2014, 4:53 AM | Rignite
                    0
                  • kirmeliux

                    Will Google Recrawl an Indexed URL Which is No Longer Internally Linked?

                    We accidentally introduced Google to our incomplete site. The end result: thousands of pages indexed which return nothing but a "Sorry, no results" page. I know there are many ways to go about this, but the sheer number of pages makes it frustrating. Ideally, in the interim, I'd love to 404 the offending pages and allow Google to recrawl them, realize they're dead, and begin removing them from the index. Unfortunately, we've removed the initial internal links that lead to this premature indexation from our site. So my question is, will Google revisit these pages based on their own records (as in, this page is indexed, let's go check it out again!), or will they only revisit them by following along a current site structure? We are signed up with WMT if that helps.

                    Technical SEO | Jul 25, 2014, 3:57 PM | kirmeliux
                    0
                  • FranFerrara

                    Why do some URLs for a specific client have "/index.shtml"?

                    Reviewing our client's URLs for a 301 redirect strategy, we have noticed that many URLs have "/index.shtml." The part we don'd understand is these URLs aren't the homepage and they have multiple folders followed by "/index.shtml" Does anyone happen to know why this may be occurring? Is there any SEO value in keeping the "/index.shtml" in the URL?

                    Technical SEO | Jan 15, 2014, 7:18 PM | FranFerrara
                    0
                  • M_D_Golden_Peak

                    How to Remove /feed URLs from Google's Index

                    Hey everyone, I have an issue with RSS /feed URLs being indexed by Google for some of our Wordpress sites. Have a look at this Google query, and click to show omitted search results. You'll see we have 500+ /feed URLs indexed by Google, for our many category pages/etc. Here is one of the example URLs: http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/fonts-typography/letterforms/attachment/gilhelveticatrade/feed/. Based on this content/code of the XML page, it looks like Wordpress is generating these: <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2</generator> Any idea how to get them out of Google's index without 301 redirecting them? We need the Wordpress-generated RSS feeds to work for various uses. My first two thoughts are trying to work with our Development team to see if we can get a "noindex" meta robots tag on the pages, by they are dynamically-generated pages...so I'm not sure if that will be possible. Or, perhaps we can add a "feed" paramater to GWT "URL Parameters" section...but I don't want to limit Google from crawling these again...I figure I need Google to crawl them and see some code that says to get the pages out of their index...and THEN not crawl the pages anymore. I don't think the "Remove URL" feature in GWT will work, since that tool only removes URLs from the search results, not the actual Google index. FWIW, this site is using the Yoast plugin. We set every page type to "noindex" except for the homepage, Posts, Pages and Categories. We have other sites on Yoast that do not have any /feed URLs indexed by Google at all. Side note, the /robots.txt file was previously blocking crawling of the /feed URLs on this site, which is why you'll see that note in the Google SERPs when you click on the query link given in the first paragraph.

                    Technical SEO | Aug 13, 2013, 2:56 PM | M_D_Golden_Peak
                    0
                  • Ant-808

                    How long will Google take to stop crawling an old URL once it has been 301 redirected

                    I need to do a clean-up old urls that have been redirected in sitemap and was wondering about this.

                    Technical SEO | Nov 4, 2011, 2:41 PM | Ant-808
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.