We changed the URL structure 10 weeks ago and Google hasn't indexed it yet...
-
We recently modified the whole URL structure on our website, which resulted in huge amount of 404 pages changing them to nice human readable urls. We did this in the middle of March - about 10 weeks ago...
We used to have around 5000 404 pages in the beginning, but this number is decreasing slowly. (We have around 3000 now).
On some parts of the website we have also set up a 301 redirect from the old URLs to the new ones, to avoid showing a 404 page thus making the “indexing transmission”, but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.
We've lost a significant amount of traffic, because of the URL changes, as Google removed the old URLs, but hasn’t indexed our new URLs yet.
Is there anything else we can do to get our website indexed with the new URL structure quicker?
It might also be useful to know that we are a page rank 4 and have over 30,000 unique users a month so I am sure Google often comes to the site quite often and pages we have made since then that only have the new url structure are indexed within hours sometimes they appear in search the next day!
-
Good Point. I'd suggest a canonical on the new pages as well as blasting them to the social media sites for a quicker turnaround.
-
They already has 5000 404 pages. I don't mean block any existing pages which were changed.
I mean only block pages which always returned a 404
-
I agree with Dave except I would not recommend blocking any pages with robots.txt. 301 redirect them all to their new pages.
-
If you have a site with 5000 pages and you decide to change all the page URLs, you will still have a site with 5000 pages. The problem is that Google has no way of understanding how the old pages map to the new ones. You do.
You need to 301 your old pages to your new ones. This method is a win all around.
You lose zero traffic. You keep 90%+ of the link value, and your visitors can find the pages they are looking for.
Right now Google sees your new pages as duplicate content and wont list it.
-
- Have you setup a Google Webmasters account?
- You should submit a sitemap to Webmasters. Info Here
- Also make sure all the 404 pages are blocked by robots.txt
- Add in a 301 redirect from all old content to the new content.
This link is about moving to a new domain but most of the steps still apply.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Folders in url structure?
Hello, Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1230 -
Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google?
Hi, we re-branded and launched a new website in February 2016. In June we saw a steep drop in the number of URLs indexed, and there have continued to be smaller dips since. We started an account with Moz and found several thousand high priority crawl errors for duplicate pages and have since fixed those with canonical tags. However, we are still seeing the number of URLs indexed drop. Do URLs with canonical tags get indexed by Google? I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this. A good portion of our URLs have canonical tags because they are just events with different dates, but otherwise the content of the page is the same.
Technical SEO | | zasite0 -
Google crawling but not indexing for no apparent reason
Client's site went secure about two months ago and chose root domain as rel canonical (so site redirects to https://rootdomain.com (no "www"). Client is seeing the site recognized and indexed by Google about every 3-5 days and then not indexed until they request a "Fetch". They've been going through this annoying process for about 3 weeks now. Not sure if it's a server issue or a domain issue. They've done work to enhance .htaccess (i.e., the redirects) and robots.txt. If you've encountered this issue and have a recommendation or have a tech site or person resource to recommend, please let me know. Google search engine results are respectable. One option would be to do nothing but then would SERPs start to fall without requesting a new Fetch? Thanks in advance, Alan
Technical SEO | | alankoen1230 -
Should I remove these pages from the Google index?
Hi there, Please have a look at the following URL http://www.elefant-tours.com/index.php?callback=imagerotator&gid=65&483. It's a "sitemap" generated by a Wordpress plug-in called NextGen gallery and it maps all the images that have been added to the site through this plugin, which is quite a lot in this case. I can see that these "sitemap" pages have been indexed by Google and I'm wondering whether I should remove these or not? In my opinion these are pages that a search engine would never would want to serve as a search result and pages that a visitor never would want to see. Attracting any traffic through Google images is irrelevant in this case. What is your advice? Block it or leave it indexed or something else?
Technical SEO | | Robbern0 -
Google Analtyics Changes?
Did anyone else's google analtyics numbers jump up this month? Our unique visitors increased some, but our pageviews tripled and our bounces dropped significantly. We have been working to optimize the sites and did have a huge drop in errors in our campaign reports.
Technical SEO | | Stevej240 -
Google is indexing proxy (mirror) site.
We moved the site to a new hosting. Previously the site used Godaddy Windows Hosting with white domain masking. After moving the site we just mirrored the site. We have to use mirrored domain for PPC campaigns because it mirrored site contains true BRAND name and there is better conversion with that domain plus all trade marked keywords are approved for mirrored domain. Robots.txt User-agent: * Host: www.hermitagejewelers.com Disallow: /Bin Disallow: /css www.hermitagejewelers.com is the main domain. Mirror site is www.ermitagejewelers.com (Without the "H" at the beginning) Most of the keywords are now picked up by mirror site. I have not noticed any major changes in ranking except that it ranks for mirror site. We updated the sitemap. Website is designed very poorly (not by us). Also, we submitted the change address request for ermitagejewelers to hermitagejewelers in webmasters. Please let me know any advice to fix that problem. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | MaxRuso1 -
URL Structure
Hi Guys, I'm in the process of creating a very exciting startup aimed at the baby industry. It's essentially a social commerce question where parents can shop for products, create lists of products and ask questions. The challenge I'm facing is how best to structure my URLs from an SEO standpoint. For example a common baby topic such as "feeding", can sit in all three categories: Shopping category aggregates all products related to feeding List category aggregates all lists related to feeding Question category aggregates all question and answers on feeding So for that keyword "feeding" you have 3 potential landing pages. What I was wondering is what is the most effective way of doing it? I was thinking of something along these lines: /shopping/feeding /baby_list/feeding /ask/feeding Would love to hear your points of view on this. Thanks! Walid
Technical SEO | | walidalsaqqaf0 -
URL's for news content
We have made modifications to the URL structure for a particular client who publishes news articles in various niche industries. In line with SEO best practice we removed the article ID from the URL - an example is below: http://www.website.com/news/123/news-article-title
Technical SEO | | mccormackmorrison
http://www.website.com/news/read/news-article-title Since this has been done we have noticed a decline in traffic volumes (we have not as yet assessed the impact on number of pages indexed). Google have suggested that we need to include unique numerical IDs in the URL somewhere to aid spidering. Firstly, is this policy for news submissions? Secondly (if the previous answer is yes), is this to overcome the obvious issue with the velocity and trend based nature of news submissions resulting in false duplicate URL/ title tag violations? Thirdly, do you have any advice on the way to go? Thanks P.S. One final one (you can count this as two question credits if required), is it possible to check the volume of pages indexed at various points in the past i.e. if you think that the number of pages being indexed may have declined, is there any way of confirming this after the event? Thanks again! Neil0