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I'm in the process of re-organizing my web site.

Initially I thought that the best way to do this was to make my changes and put permanent redirects. However Google is still showing my old pages as being current.

What is the best way to make a smooth transition?

Specific matters:

  • Page that is removed as no longer relevant.
  • Two pages that have been combined.
  • One page that has been split.
  • At what point should an old page be removed from sitemap.
  • Is there merit in asking google to reindex site?
  • Should redirects be left in place permanently, or after a period of time.
Sherwood Botsford
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    It can take weeks or even months for Google to update depending upon how fresh your site is, how popular, how trendy, size, etc. If you have redirects established, then this should not be a problem. You will not lose search traffic. I do understand that you want the SERPs to update sooner than later. I get it! However, search engines are not real-time and cannot be. The Internet is just too huge. Cheers!! – closetnoc Feb 02 '17 at 18:10
  • Cool URIs don't change. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cool_URIs_don%27t_change and https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI – David Cary May 05 '17 at 16:08

2 Answers2

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As mentioned above, it takes a while for search engines to start ranking your new URLs. However, it is best practice to ensure that your xml sitemaps are up to date with new URLs and submit them to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools as well.

Kirsty Simms
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You can force a reindex of your website by using Google Webmaster tools > fetch as google. You can submit up to 500 Individual pages manually to be crawled and 10 full crawls from the main index page which is preferable. This will speed up the process of updating all of your information. 301 Redirects will take a while to find, or you can demote the pages that no longer exist in google webmaster tools. (Not suggested) Never remove old pages if they still exists. You only remove pages that are being redirected.

DEVPROCB
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