How long does it typically take for Google to recognize URL change? (from your experience)

Hello all,
From your experience, how long will it take (google & bing) to essentially delete indexed urls and recognize new ones?


I have created a new site (600+ pages) and submitted the sitemap (to goog and bing) etc....Then, dumb me decided a week later that I wanted to change the URL structure (which I just did last week). I deleted the old sitemap and uploaded a fresh one to be crawled. (in process...actually 178 of 600+ pages currently done)


My old url structured links still show up in searches...how long do you believe they will be there? I know I should redirect them to current links but there are 600+ pages in which I would have to do that. Any idea of a realistic time frame on these getting straightened up?

Thanks!

You may want to use google webmaster tools to have your old urls deleted quicker. It may normally take a few weeks but you would usually be getting countless 404 errors.

From my experience a couple weeks to a month, however it might take longer than that.

I operate 15 websites that have about 50000 pages each. They range in PR from 5-8. Google is crawling some of them every day. What I have found is that changes appear in the SERPs within 3-20 days... For the page in question look at the google cache date prior to making the change... if it was very recent then expect 10-20 days. If it was last month then expect 3-10 days.

Not a perfect formula, but it works for me. You just have to remember that Google's index is a cyclical process and when your change occurs within that cycle effects the timing of when it becomes reflected in the SERPs.

It took only 1 week to my link to change URL.