Why is Google is showing two versions of my article?

Hi everyone,

I have been working on content and keywords optimization for some of my articles, whenever I finish the modifications which include changing the URL of the page or body content, i make sure to add the new url into search console to request an indexing.

After some time, i notice that the new updated article has been indexed and the old version is still showing in the search results.

Currently, with one of my articles, i have the new version in the 2nd position, and the old version right after it in the third position.

How can i fix this? Does this affect my SEO negatively in any way? (like plagiarism perhaps)


Any help would be much appreciated.

Thank you

Did you make a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one?

windakolit said:

Did you make a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one?

Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply.

Now that you are saying i have not. Because when i changed the url Wordpress would automatically redirect the old url to the new one. So i take it from your suggestion that i should add a manual 301 redirect. And so i did by using the "Redirection" plugin.

I noticed while looking up all the pages of my site on Google Search results that there were some old deleted pages still appearing, so i redirected them to the homepage.

Is that the right approach?

If your old URL returns the server response code 301, and the redirect target is a new URL, then you did everything right

windakolit said:

If your old URL returns the server response code 301, and the redirect target is a new URL, then you did everything right

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for your advice. So i'm guessing that the old URLs will disappear by themselves over time?

Yes, you just need to wait

windakolit said:

Yes, you just need to wait

Click to expand...

Perfect! Thank you