For one of my site we create new design and all of it's URL's have changed .
If i redirect (301) my new URL's to old one, which URL will be crawled/indexed by search engines.
Eg. Old URL: example.com/this-is-an-example.php New URL: example.com/info.php?example_id=90
phranque
7:40 pm on Apr 17, 2012 (gmt 0)
the search engines will crawl/index the target of a 301 redirect. you should externally redirect all the "new urls" to the equivalent old urls using a 301 status code and then internally rewrite the old urls to the new urls so that the new urls never get exposed to the search engine crawlers. also be sure to use only the old urls for site navigation menus and when otherwise linking internally.
g1smd
12:43 am on Apr 20, 2012 (gmt 0)
Are you sure you labelled the old and new URLs correctly. The aim is usually to redirect to a friendly looking URL without parameters in it.
enigma1
9:26 am on Apr 20, 2012 (gmt 0)
the search engines will crawl/index the target of a 301 redirect.
And keep the old one in their index for ages. So whatever you do make sure is a "permanent" change. Although it's more likely to change the urls for the nth time and spiders keep trying the first variant.
g1smd
9:53 pm on Apr 20, 2012 (gmt 0)
Google will revisit both URLs.
They will quickly index the redirected-to URL.
They will eventually delist the URL which redirects.
enigma1
9:10 am on Apr 21, 2012 (gmt 0)
They will eventually delist the URL which redirects
Can you specify "eventually"? is it years, decades, centuries....
lucy24
12:35 am on Apr 22, 2012 (gmt 0)
Centuries, hmm, time will tell. But if g### is still around in 2112, does anyone doubt they will still periodically crawl pages that were redirected or 410'd in 2008?
You can always stop them short by deleting the old URLs (index and cache) in gwt.
g1smd
10:07 am on Apr 23, 2012 (gmt 0)
It usually takes 2 or 3 months to delist redirecting URLs.
Google can request non-redirecting 404 pages for a whole decade. I see it on several sites.
enigma1
11:55 am on Apr 23, 2012 (gmt 0)
If you mean delist from their search results, yes they will remove them pretty quick, but they will keep trying them for ages even if they are not visible elsewhere - so they must have some sort of history in place which is never updated perhaps? Unless some internet archive exposes those links in a private manner to SEs. In any case they are stored somewhere.
And I haven't seen the response header making a difference. I tried 404s 301s 410s etc, spiders will keep access them. And if you make a mistake like a 301 to 404 you get an error in GWT. It gives me the impression the spider thinks these are live links.
lucy24
4:11 pm on Apr 23, 2012 (gmt 0)
As minor anecdotal evidence...
Last summer I redid a whole directory from scratch, and rather than deal with all those 404s and 301s I roboted-out all the now-nonexistent directories and let g### start over. (They are all very thin pages.) A few weeks ago I cleaned up robots.txt and removed those blocks. The search engines promptly went wild looking for pages they hadn't seen-- and that nobody, anywhere, has linked to-- in the better part of a year.
And not just a quick "Oh, it's gone, never mind then." One page has already picked up four 410's-- even though it has long since been indexed at its new location.
Best guess: The googlebot's shopping list is sorted by frequency, but nothing ever drops off it entirely. ("Yes, I realize you stopped carrying that product in 1994 and I've found a perfectly adequate substitute, but a robot can always dream.")
