Why is this so confusing!?

jamesjk1

Supreme Member

Nov 1, 2012

1,237

845

• Aug 14, 2014

• #1

I changed the url structure of 5 of my articles - i.e. from http://www.example.com/green-shoes to http://www.example.com/the-best-green-shoes. Same content - just different url structure.

I re-directed the old url's to the new one's with 301 via htaccess. All re-directs work fine, but when searching site:example.com, google still lists old url's. I presume this is seen as dupe content and isn't good for ranking. Do I also need to delete the old url's via webmaster tools (remove url's), no-index and no-follow them? Or would it be better to just get them to return a 404?

Many thanks

 

aka sam

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Sep 15, 2011

6,009

1,103

• Aug 14, 2014

• #2

How much time since you changed it?

Google takes time to see the changes.

 

SEO Power

Elite Member

Jul 14, 2014

2,642

688

• Aug 14, 2014

• #3

Don't delete them via GWT and don't turn them into 404 pages. The old urls are still listed because Google has not discovered the redirects. Once they do, the old urls will disappear and be replaced by the new ones.

 

lord1027

Elite Member

Sep 20, 2013

3,218

2,342

• Aug 14, 2014

• #4

Give it some time. Usually, how long does it take for google to index new pages from your website?

 

J

Jan79

Newbie

Jan 20, 2014

19

0

• Aug 14, 2014

• #5

It will fix itself in time, be patient

 

SpookSEO

Senior Member

Dec 15, 2012

848

183

• Aug 15, 2014

• #6

I have been into the same situation before. I have also tried changing it multiple times. How many times did you change yours? There are times when it takes Google a very long time to go over those kinds of changes. All you can do at the moment is to be patient.

 

S

stenem

Registered Member

Jul 31, 2012

52

22

• Aug 15, 2014

• #7

just wait and let google crawl your site again

 

jamesjk1

Supreme Member

Nov 1, 2012

1,237

845

• Aug 15, 2014
• Thread Starter Thread Starter

• #8

SpookSEO said:

I have been into the same situation before. I have also tried changing it multiple times. How many times did you change yours? There are times when it takes Google a very long time to go over those kinds of changes. All you can do at the moment is to be patient.

Click to expand...

Hey mate, changed it twice. Yeah, it's really annoying as I think it may be seen as duplicate content. Did you use the url removal tool in webmaster tools? When did you last change yours and have you seen any changes?

 

SmTasker

Elite Member

Jr. VIP

Oct 26, 2007

3,187

955

• Aug 15, 2014

• #9

Don't stress that much over duplicate content, it's not nearly as bad as they say and it's on your site, and you have redirects in place. Stop worrying and let it be, add more quality content and grow the site more, it will all sort itself out.