Existing Pages in Google Index and Changing URLs

[hiphound]

Hi!!

I am launching a newly recoded site this week and had a another noobie question.

The URL structure has changed slightly and I have installed a 301 redirect to take care of that. I am wondering how Google will handle my "old" pages? Will they just fall out of the index? Or does the 301 redirect tell Google to rewrite the URLs in the index?

I am just concerned I may see an "old" page and a "new" page with the same content in the index. Just want to make sure I have covered all my bases.

Thanks!!

Lynn

[scanlin]

You should be okay with 301s. See http://www.atlantaanalytics.com/practicing-web-analytics/how-does-google-analytics-handle-301-and-302-redirects/

[CPU]

If you have set up the 301 correctly then if a user tries to visit the old page either via typing the old URL or via the search engine then they will be directed to the new content. When the site is reindexed the old results should fall out of the index.

[hiphound]

Thank you!! Great article!

Follow-up - how long does it take for the URLs to be rewriten in the Google index? Is that done on the next crawl?

Thanks! I really appreciate the help.

Lynn

[scanlin]

Crawl rate depends on your site size, your site's rate of change, how fast you serve pages, and I'm sure a couple of other factors. If you're not yet on Google Webmaster Tools then you should be (it's free). It will show you pages/day that the googlebot is crawling your site.

[hiphound]

Hi!! The only thing that has changed is the removal of /shop/ from the product pages URLs. Here is the 301 installed. I was told all was well with it. Would love another set of eyeballs if you can confirm it looks good. I am actually ranking for some things so am paranoid I am going to mess the site move up. Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it.

############################################

enable rewrites

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

#RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com/

RedirectMatch 301 ^/shop?/$ http://hiphound.com

###########################################

[hiphound]

Hi! I am in Google Webmaster Tools but haven't played with it extensively since I set it up and added my domain.

Looking at it seeing some crawl errors. Most of them have SID in them. Why would it be trying to crawl a session ID?

That brings up another question. The shopper is able to narrow down a category by manufacturer and price. These links will be crawled and indexed as well. Do I want them to be???

Anything you can offer would be appreciated. If it's too in-depth (meaning will take you too much time) can take this to a private question.

Thank you!

Lynn

[scanlin]

I would be happy to help if I knew the answer, but I don't. I don't have session IDs in my URLs (I use cookie-based session management instead, mostly because I wanted clean URLs for bookmarking and SEO). Perhaps someone else who uses session IDs in URLs could answer (or else Google "session IDs in urls" and see what comes up. I found this one: http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/why-session-ids-and-search-engines-dont.php )

[hiphound]

Hi!! Thanks Mike! I didn't realize I was passing the SIDs (as not in the URL) but it makes sense I am. Will take this to a private question and let you know what I hear back.

Thanks for your help!

Lynn