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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Looking to remove dates from URL permalink structure. What do you think of this idea?

    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.

    Looking to remove dates from URL permalink structure. What do you think of this idea?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    6
    18
    6665
    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.
    • HashtagJeff
      HashtagJeff last edited by

      I know most people who remove dates from their URL structure usually do so and then setup a 301 redirect. I believe that's the right way to go about this typically. My biggest fear with doing a global 301 redirect implementation like that across an entire site is that I've seen cases where this has sort of shocked Google and the site took a hit in organic traffic pretty bad.

      Heres what I'm thinking a safer approach would be and I'd like to hear others thoughts. What if...

      1. Changed permalink structure moving forward to remove the date in future posts.
      2. All current URLs stay as is with their dates
      3. Moving forward we would go back and optimize past posts in waves (including proper 301 redirects and better URL structure). This way we avoid potentially shocking Google with a global change across all URLs.

      Do you know of a way this is possible with a large Wordpress website? Do you see any conplications that could come about in this process? I'd like to hear any other thoughts about this please.

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • julienraby
        julienraby @HashtagJeff last edited by

        Hey Jeff,

        thank you for your input. So you just globally changed the permalink structure, put global redirects in place and you didn't see permanent loss in trafic? And you did that on multiple sites?

        If so I'll most probably follow your path.

        Thanks again,

        Julien

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • HashtagJeff
          HashtagJeff @julienraby last edited by

          Hey Julien -

          I wouldn't go this route. Since asking this question I have had dates removed from 30+ domains, many with 5-10 million+ pageviews per month. We haven't seen this as a risk and are now very in favor of removing dates from URLs on most sites we work with. We work with sites that have very evergreen content, and republishing is a very strong SEO strategy.

          The process is very similar to moving your site to HTTPS from HTTP. Since Google has started recommending HTTPS we haven't seen any issue with removing dates as well.

          Hope that helps 🙂

          julienraby 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • julienraby
            julienraby @BlueprintMarketing last edited by

            Hey Thomas,

            Interesting thought! Could you go in a little more details as to how that regex would work? Would that randomize the redirects to only a portion of the posts?

            Thanks!

            Julien

            HashtagJeff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • BlueprintMarketing
              BlueprintMarketing last edited by

              I think only do 10% of pages watch them if you like what you see do the next 20%

              RedirectMatch301^/([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/(.*)$ http://yourwebsite.com/$3
              
              julienraby 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • HashtagJeff
                HashtagJeff @garrettn last edited by

                Garrett -

                I never got a clear answer, but I have since gone forward making changes on 20+ Wordpress blogs without any ill-effect. The changes we made were only to sites that had dates in the permalink structure and 301 redirects were put in place (on the server, not through a plugin). Trying to change the permalink structure going forward but not back was too much of a hassle. It appears Google sees this as a positive change for users because it cleans up the permalink structure and allows site owners to keep their content updated and continue sharing.

                Not sure how this will apply in other scenarios such as removing folder structure (categories and tags) from the permalink, but I've had only positive results removing the dates. I work with some very high profile mom and food blogs so I have some pretty solid evidence and data supporting my decisions now.

                I hope that helps. Cheers!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • garrettn
                  garrettn Subscriber last edited by

                  Hi Jeff,

                  Did you end up making these changes? How is it going? I found your post as I was researching and rethinking how to structure WordPress blog permalinks.

                  I have a few e-commerce clients with blog posts that are several years old and still popular in organic search. I'd like to turn some of them into evergreen content that is regularly updated, but I feel like we should do something about the permalinks first.

                  There are some great insights here. Thank you to all who contributed.

                  Garrett

                  HashtagJeff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • LoganRay
                    LoganRay @HashtagJeff last edited by

                    No problem, glad to help! Best of luck with whichever route you go with!

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • HashtagJeff
                      HashtagJeff @LoganRay last edited by

                      It was worth a shot. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Cheers!

                      LoganRay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • LoganRay
                        LoganRay @HashtagJeff last edited by

                        Unfortunately, I don't have any examples for ya. Never come across this particular topic for a client.

                        HashtagJeff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • HashtagJeff
                          HashtagJeff @LoganRay last edited by

                          Know of any site that has used the canonical to do anything like this? It seems like the safest option, I just haven't seen this to this scale is all.

                          LoganRay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • LoganRay
                            LoganRay @HashtagJeff last edited by

                            Yes, I'm saying you should keep URLs as they are. I'm always an advocate for not changing URL structure unless there's a really good, highly beneficial reason for doing so. I don't know of a way to change only new URL structures while keeping old ones the same, but I'm no WP expert.

                            HashtagJeff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • HashtagJeff
                              HashtagJeff @LoganRay last edited by

                              Although I haven't strongly considered that approach, it did cross my mind to utilize the canonical. Do you know of any way to change WordPress permalink structure going forward but not backwards? Or are you suggesting we keep the dates in the URL going forward? I just think that eventually we'll have to think about updating that URL structure.

                              LoganRay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • LoganRay
                                LoganRay @HashtagJeff last edited by

                                OK, now that I understand the reasoning...

                                I believe there's a better, less-risky approach. What I would do is write a completely new post based on information from the old post. At the same time you publish the new post, go back to the old version and add these two things: a canonical tag pointing to the new version, and a bit of _very readable _text at the top linking to the new post. Something like "Hey, thanks for your interest in our content. Feel free to read on, but we thought you should know we've updated this post which can be found here: link"

                                This accomplishes a few important things. It eliminates the need for a risky project that could affect your entire site just for the ability to update posts (which I'm guessing doesn't happen too often, what percent of posts get updated?). The canonical tag removes the dupe content risk so you're not cannibalizing your own content. And leaving the old post there gives people the opportunity to discover old content that, while possibly not relevant anymore, still demonstrates you've been a trustworthy source of information for a long time.

                                HashtagJeff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • HashtagJeff
                                  HashtagJeff @LoganRay last edited by

                                  Logan,

                                  By not being able to remove the dates we're not able to go back to a 5-year old post, make updates, and then republish the content. This is a "mom blog" and the topics can be recycled, but if we create a new post that we also covered 5 years ago we would be competing with ourself instead of using something that already has some authority and rank to it.

                                  That's why we were thinking to somehow make it possible (in WordPress) to keep all current URLs as is, change the permalink structure moving forward so that future posts don't have date, and then be able to update posts as we go and 301 them manually over time. Does that make sense?

                                  I agree with your last 2 statements, it is a HUGE risk to 301 this entire site to do away with those dates. Even though redirects supposedly pass all link juice we all know that a big change like that across an entire site could have ill-effect with search engines.

                                  I'd like to know if anyone has gone about the URL structure change like I'm outlining here. Am I crazy to think that is a logical way to go about it? I haven't been able to find anywhere that someone has done this though.

                                  LoganRay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • LoganRay
                                    LoganRay last edited by

                                    Jeff,

                                    Based on the traffic you say this blog gets, I'm assuming its rather large and has hundreds, if not thousands of posts. Which leads me to one simple question:

                                    Why? This seems like a HUGE amount of risk and a pretty decent amount of work to go into something that's really not going to provide any benefit.

                                    *edit: It should also be noted that just because Google has recently stated that redirects now pass all link juice doesn't mean you should go needlessly add a massive amount of redirects. There are other implications that redirects have, like load time for example. If you have 1,000 redirects, every single one of those is going to be checked before any page on your site loads, which takes a lot of time.

                                    HashtagJeff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • HashtagJeff
                                      HashtagJeff @DonnaDuncan last edited by

                                      Thanks for your response. I actually agree with most, if not all of what you are saying.

                                      The problem is that this is a larger blog with 5-7 million page views on average per month. 1 million+ just from organic. I agree with your statement about postponing and never getting done. With a large blog I still think it would be easier (less stressful, not necessarily easier) to manage it in waves in order to pause or correct when there is a larger than normal dip that maybe doesn't come back up. With a business it makes sense, but with these bloggers sites it seems like too big of a risk when it's what brings in almost all the income. Does that make sense?

                                      That tweet you're referring to, I thought that was mainly in regard to HTTP to HTTPS migrations. I need to look more into that I guess.

                                      Thanks!

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • DonnaDuncan
                                        DonnaDuncan last edited by

                                        I'm not a fan of your plan.

                                        There can be many reasons why a site might "take a hit". For example, if page-to-page redirects were not implemented or the sitemap was not updated, updated correctly, or resubmitted to search engines. I wouldn't assume that will happen in your case. In my experience, if the transition is done correctly and there's a hit, it's short-lived.

                                        If you're thinking the redirects will cause you to lose SEO equity, that is no longer the case. Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst, tweeted on July 26, 2016 "30x redirects don’t lose PageRank anymore."

                                        One of the biggest risks (in my mind) of staging the migration the way you suggest is that the "waves" never happen. I see that a lot - a situation where an organization agrees to postpone work to a future date that never arrives. New and competing priorities take precedence resulting in an endless postponement. If you have the management commitment, funding and resources to do the work now, I say bite the bullet and go for it. Make a plan. Stick to it. Check and double check your work.

                                        HashtagJeff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                        • 1 / 1
                                        • First post
                                          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

                                        • kirin44355

                                          Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?

                                          Hello good people of the MOZ community, I am looking to do a mass edit of URLS on content pages within our sites. The way these were initially setup was to be unique by having the date in the URL which was a few years ago and can make evergreen content now seem dated. The new URLS would follow a better folder path style naming convention and would be way better URLS overall. Some examples of the **old **URLS would be https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-9-17-2012,default,pg.html
                                          https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-11-13-2012,default,pg.html
                                          https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates/buying-guide-9-3-2012,default,pg.html
                                          https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates/buying-guide-7-19-2012,default,pg.html The new URLS would look like this which would be a great improvement https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
                                          https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
                                          https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates,default,pg.html
                                          https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates,default,pg.html My worry is that we do rank fairly well organically for some of the content and don't want to anger the google machine. The way I would be doing the process would be to edit the URLS to the new layout, then do the redirect for them and push live. Is there a great SEO risk to doing this? 
                                          Is there a way to do a mass "Fetch as googlebot" to reindex these if I do say 50 a day? I only see the ability to do 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend. 
                                          Is there anything else I am missing? I believe this change would overall be good in the long run but do not want to take a huge hit initially by doing something incorrectly. This would be done on 5- to a couple hundred links across various sites I manage. Thanks in advance,
                                          Chris Gorski

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin44355
                                          0
                                        • digitalcrc

                                          Best-practice URL structures with multiple filter combinations

                                          Hello, We're putting together a large piece of content that will have some interactive filtering elements. There are two types of filters, topics and object types. The architecture under the hood constrains us so that everything needs to be in URL parameters. If someone selects a single filter, this can look pretty clean: www.domain.com/project?topic=firstTopic
                                          or
                                          www.domain.com/project?object=typeOne The problems arise when people select multiple topics, potentially across two different filter types: www.domain.com/project?topic=firstTopic-secondTopic-thirdTopic&object=typeOne-typeTwo I've raised concerns around the structure in general, but it seems to be too late at this point so now I'm scratching my head thinking of how best to get these indexed. I have two main concerns: A ton of near-duplicate content and hundreds of URLs being created and indexed with various filter combinations added Over-reacting to the first point above and over-canonicalizing/no-indexing combination pages to the detriment of the content as a whole Would the best approach be to index each single topic filter individually, and canonicalize any combinations to the 'view all' page? I don't have much experience with e-commerce SEO (which this problem seems to have the most in common with) so any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalcrc
                                          0
                                        • Jseddon92

                                          Removing .html from URLs - impact of rankings?

                                          Good evening Mozzers. Couple of questions which I hope you can help with. Here's the first. I am wondering, are we likely to see ranking changes if we remove the .html from the sites URLs. For example website.com/category/sub-category.html Change to: website.com/category/sub-category/ We will of course make sure we 301 redirect to the new, user friendly URLs, but I am wondering if anyone has had previous experience of implementing this change and how it has effected rankings. By having the .html in the URLs, does this stop link juice being flowed back to the root category? Second question: If one page can be loaded with and without a forward slash "/" at the end, is this a duplicate page, or would Google consider this as the same page? Would like to eliminate duplicate content issues if this is the case. For example: website.com/category/ and website.com/category Duplicate content/pages?

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jseddon92
                                          0
                                        • Jonathan.Smith

                                          Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?

                                          I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith
                                          0
                                        • friendoffood

                                          Removing UpperCase URLs from Indexing

                                          This search   -  site:www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix gives me this result from Google: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                                          https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix
                                          Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. and Google tells me there is another one, which is 'very simliar'.  When I click to see it I get: Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba
                                          https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/Automotix
                                          Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. This is because I recently changed my program to redirect all urls with uppercase in them to lower case, as it appears that all lowercase is strongly recommended. I assume that having 2 indexed urls for the same content dilutes link juice.  Can I safely remove all of my UpperCase indexed pages from Google without it affecting the indexing of the lower case urls?  And if, so what is the best way -- there are thousands.

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood
                                          0
                                        • Atlanta-SMO

                                          Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's

                                          An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atlanta-SMO
                                          0
                                        • Mark_Ch

                                          How to structure articles on a website.

                                          Hi All, Key to a successful website is quality content - so the Gods of Google tell me. Embrace your audience with quality feature rich articles on your products or services, hints and tips, how to, etc. So you build your article page with all the correct criteria; Long Tail Keyword or phrases hitting the URL, heading, 1st sentance, etc. My question is this
                                          Let's say you have 30 articles, where would you place the 30 articles for SEO purposes and user experiences. My thought are:
                                          1] on the home page create a column with a clear heading "Useful articles" and populate the column with links to all 30 articles.
                                          or
                                          2] throughout your website create link references to the articles as part of natural information flow.
                                          or
                                          3] Create a banner or impact logo on the all pages to entice your audience to click and land on dedicated "articles page" Thanks Mark

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
                                          0
                                        • WebMarketingandDesign

                                          Multiple URLs for the same page

                                          I am working with a client and recently discovered that they have several URLs that go to the same page. http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx
                                          http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx
                                          http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF
                                          http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FS
                                          http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=FF
                                          http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=ffhttp://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=MShttp://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=
                                          http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF#
                                          http://www.maps.com/FunFacts
                                          http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?.nav=FF I am afraid this is happening all over the site. So, my question is: Is this hurting the SEO and how? If so what is the best way to go about fixing this problem? Thanks for your help!

                                          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarketingandDesign
                                          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
                                        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.