Changing a permalink on my Wordpress site...

[sdwellers]

When I change a permalink on my Wordpress site, then when I click on that page link in a Google search a "404 - page not found" comes up?  What am I doing wrong, or will this adjust in Google directory in a period of time?

Trying to use permalink for SEO purposes

[ofw12387]

I will recommend you to check your .htaccess file

Br

//Oliver

[Dezzign]

If Google is showing a 404 error when you click on the search result then technically you should also see a 404 error when visit the URL directly through your address bar. Google does a live fetch of your site from the search results so that won't change the 404 you're getting in a few days time.

Yes, you can return a 404 header to only the Googlebot, but this has be done intentionally via htaccess, and I doubt you've done that.

If you've been using one of the old date or the numeric permalink structure options, then you'll need to redirect your old permalinks to your new ones. You can try a plugin like 'Simple 301 Redirect' and fix the broken URLs that way if you only have a few of them. If you have a lot of them, which may be the case if you've changed your permalink structure, then you need to find a plugin that'll do the job for you. Good Luck