Wizard - 4:25 pm on Sep 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

Currently there is a problem with proper handling of 301 redirects. I've been making major URL changes in one of my sites for months, and 301 redirects I put were handled properly until about August, then Google started showing old URLs as url-only instead of forgetting them. But it happened before, it's just a matter of time.

Ok, sometimes you have to change domain or just URLs of pages, but it means that you're out of index for a few months, just face it. That's one of the reasons I was making the URL changes gradually for months, some pages are already ranking very high, other have to wait.

Fast way is to use URL Console, but it means facing all side-effects. Slow and secure way is to use 301 and wait until it is handled properly by Google.

Notice: remember to leave a link to old URLs to ensure 301 will ever be crawled. On the other hand, leaving such link too long results in reappearing of old URLs. And all rollbacks in the index make it even more difficult.