How to tell google about the changes

[idreams]

Hello All

this is my first question here. we have recently changed our website design and backend. so the problem now is in google it is showing the old url's and when ever a client come from google he is prasented with a 404 error page

if this happenes many times. will google penalise our site ? if yes. how to prevent this from happen.

waiting for some replies.. thanks

[SimonCullum]

Hi There

It sounds like your old URLs have not been 301 Redirected to the new URLs.  If so, it's now a case of damage limitation.

As a matter of urgency, you'll need to map your old pages to point to the most appropriate new ones, then 301 redirect those old URLs to the mapped new ones.

Then update your sitemap.xml and submit/re-submit it via Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT). Also ensure that your robots.txt file is up-to-date.

If it's not too late, which it probably isn't yet as you say that Google is showing your old URLs, this will ensure that as much page strength as possible is retained, by being transferred from the old page to the new one via a 301 redirect. It will let Google know which old pages to replace (reindex) with the correct new page.

This will also reduce the number of 404 pages that are presented to your visitors as the search results (old URLs) will be redirected to the correct new pages.

As for your homepage, hopefully that hasn't changed (as in a new domain name). If it is indeed the same as before, you'll still get visitors finding that page correctly. Though with the site showing so many 404 pages and at present, old pages loosing strength as they cannot be found, your domain authority and homepage strength could start to reduce soon, thus reducing your rankings for your homepage.

If your domain name has changed, you'll need to inform Google of the change via GWMT.

If the above isn't done and done soon, your old pages will start to disappear from search engine indexes and you'll be starting from scratch with your new pages.

Hope that helps,

Regards

Simon

[idreams]

hey

thank you so much for nice explanation.

• our domain name is same. so we have trafic from google but they are getting 404 page

• we have already genarated new sitemap and submited to google via webmaster tools

• the only thing i am not sure is how to set a up a 301 direct for those many pages. like we have more 2000 pages which shows up in google. as we sale products and we have the old site up from 2008..

do i need to hand pick all the url's to create a 301 redirect ?

[SimonCullum]

You're welcome, glad to be able to help.

301 redirecting that many pages would take a while for sure and probably unnecessary for many of them.

I'd suggest individually 301 redirecting your most important pages, such as the obvious ones like your main product pages, about us, contact us... plus pages that have any valuable links pointing into them.

Then for the remainder, you can do a Wildcard 301 redirect, for example, redirecting all pages within a certain directory such as /news/

Regards

Simon

[idreams]

thanks for the reply once again.. i will try to do that ASAP. just noticed the new site url's also poping up in google when clicked in <more pages="" from="" our="" domain="">.. but mostly its a mix of old ones and new pages...</more>

[SimonCullum]

That's a good sign. Carry out all the above and you'll be back on track swiftly.

Hope it all goes well for you