How long does it take before URL's are removed from Google?

[SeanConroy]

Hello,

I recently changed our websites url structures removing the .html at the end. I had about 55 301's setup from the old url to the new. Within a day all the new URL's were listed in Google, but the old .html ones still have not been removed a week later.

Is there something I am missing? Or will it just take time for them to get de-indexed?

As well, so far the Page Authority hasn't transfered from the old pages to the new, is this typical?

Thanks!

[eyepaq]

Hi Sean,

For this small number of urls you can help Google's bot to dexindex those by having a separate xml sitemap in your web master tools with the old urls only - submit the sitemap and ping it. This will help speep up the process a little bit.

However since the number of urls is small - 55 - google will delist those old urls based on the 301 redirect (if the 301 setup is correct) at the next crawl cycle for your website.

You can also check Web master tool crawl rates to be able to make some prediction on how fast and often google is "visiting" your site.

There is no fix term for this. I have a large account with several million pages in the index, with 410 set on several thousands pages that were removed and those are still in the index after 4 months - it 's related with the size of the website, the crawl rate, freshness of those pages ...

Hope it helps.

[SeanConroy]

Thanks for your response! I would assume the 301 are setup correctly if Google is indexing them and of course they work when I test them.

Though I don't understand why you'd submit a sitemap with the old urls? How do you ping it?

Any thoughts on the Page Authority?

[eyepaq]

I assume the new url format / structure is also the new inner link structure (all links in the site are updated with the new format). if this is the case the indexation is based on this not based on old urls following the 301s.

As far as testing them - did you test to see what response code do you get when accessing the old urls ?

Though I don't understand why you'd submit a sitemap with the old urls?

** To send google's bot to crawl those and see the 301s and delist them from the index.

How do you ping it?

** There are a lot of free services available that you can use - just run a search and you will have several to choose from.