Made a typo, now I'm toast.

Put a double slash in a link, now the real links are flagged as dups!

[powerfulponder]

I made links to all my product pages with a double dash (by accident). Now I fixed it and Google moved the old links into the supplemental index but the new links are now flagged as dups, cause I'm getting thin URLs in the serps.

Was:
com//productdetail.html

Now:
com/productdetail.html

Google is giving the old links content priority over new ones.

What do I do!?

[powerfulponder]

I could really use some advice :)

[trillianjedi]

What do I do!?

Can you 301 redirect the old to the new.....?

[powerfulponder]

I currently have 301 requests sent back. But it hasn't made any affect yet. Would it be better to issue a 404? Maybe Google will completely drop the page then?

Thanks!

[Nikke]

In case nobody else have picked up your double-slashed urls for inbound links, I would definitely just 404.

All this 301ing is a bit of an overkill I think.

After all, in the Old School world that's what had happened when you first did the mistake, and the situation would never have occurd.

[AndyA]

Because Google seems to have such a hard time understanding 301s, I've begun to just delete pages if I have to rename them or move them. Google does seem to understand that, and then finds the "new" pages the same way it found the old ones.

I don't know if it's taking longer to get them indexed or not, but since Google contributes such a small amount of traffic to this particular site now, it doesn't really matter.

[jk3210]

Nuke'em [services.google.com].

[moTi]

to get the pages reliably and permanently out of the index, i would suggest not to 404 but to 410 them.

[longen]

I wouldn't nuke'em - some have mentioned deleted url's reappearing in the google index six months later. That would be a mess.

[andrea99]

According to the itef.org and wikipedia 410 is "gone." But they don't elaborate. How does one effect a 410 instead of a 404?

Might I suggest that we promote "not Google?" Yes that is a longer term project but I think it worthwhile considering.

[powerfulponder]

Has Google said anywhere that it understands all status codes, such as a 410? It's such an uncommon code, I would feel uncomfortable relying on it unless Google explicitly stated so.

[2by4]

" Because Google seems to have such a hard time understanding 301s"

I haven't had this problem, I've rewritten a couple of sites completely, with new urls and everything, full 301's from old to new, and google has barely blinked at all, in fact, I had to race googlebot on the last one to keep up with how quickly it got the new urls into the serps, zero problems at all. Of course, you have to make sure you don't make a mistake on the 301s, which is my very strong suspicion the direct cause of many 301 problems people have. Creating good mod_rewrites, 301s etc isn't very easy.

After I do the switch over I keep a very close eye on 404s, and implement 301s for all the ones that appear, that seems to have covered the issue.

Google had my new urls listed so quickly after I switched them, I can't agree they have a problem with this particular thing, old domains 301'ed to new domains, definitely problematic, new internal urls, I don't see a problem. Just my 2 cents.

[jdMorgan]

As webmasters, we should all try to comply with the HTTP/1.1 [w3.org] protocol specification. If we do our part, then any errors in search listings can be ascribed to the search engines themselves.

For an intentionally-removed page, 410-Gone is the proper server response to an HTTP/1.1 request. For true HTTP/1.0 clients, 404-Not Found is the only response defined for missing pages, whether they were unintentionally removed or not.

Note that most HTTP/1.0 clients have 'extensions' that allow them to handle the 410 response. An easy way to detect an extended HTTP/1.0 client is to check to see if it sends an HTTP_Host header. True HTTP/1.0 clients do not send this header, and so do not work with name-based virtual hosts.

The implemetation details for server status code control vary depending on what server your site is hosted on and whether you run server-side scripting such as PERL or PHP. Either way, you can verify that your server response codes are correct with the Server Headers Checker [webmasterworld.com].

Jim

[powerfulponder]

Even with the proper status code in place, how is Google going to find it for a page in the supplemental index. For orphaned pages, doesn't Google just keep the content and never request the page? So even if the pages were sending 301's how would Google ever know. Would I have to build a hive of pages to purposefully make Google find them?

[ct2000]

Google URL Console says ...

"Please keep in mind that submitting via the automatic URL removal system will cause a temporary, six months, removal of your site from the Google index."

Is that the whole site or just the submitted pages?

God i hope its just the submitted pages or have I just made a very big mistake!

[reseller]

ct2000

>>Is that the whole site or just the submitted pages?<<

Just the submitted pages.

[powerfulponder]

How does Google know about status codes for pages in the supplemental index, since for orphaned pages doesn't Google just keep the content and never request the page again? So even if the pages were sending 301's how would Google ever know. Would I have to build a hive of pages to purposefully make Google find them?

[moTi]

many unanswered questions in this thread, so it is an issue.
i can only tell you of my experience of removing my "?" (query string) pages out of the google index.

301 i have never tried (i think it's unclean for the bot) but 404 will not remove the page completely and permanently out of the index. the page in question will show as supplemental result for an indefinite time and the bot keeps on checking the page on and on.
the only way to tell google to kill the page forever seems to be 410. that means, that the page does not exist and will never exist again.

it's kind of trial and error and it's overdue for google to give the webmasters a proper guide how fix these things instead of users speculating in a forum..

[ann]

From Google:

Note: If you believe your request is urgent and cannot wait until the next time Google crawls your site, use our automatic URL removal system. We'll accept your removal request only if the page returns a true 404 error via the http headers. Please ensure that you return a true 404 error even if you choose to display a more user-friendly body of the HTML page for your visitors. It won't help to return a page that says "File Not Found" if the http headers still return a status code of 200, or normal.

Only pages that resolve to true 404 errors can be removed in this way. Outdated pages that don't return true 404 errors usually fall out of our index naturally when other pages stop linking to them. For more information about 404 errors, please see [google.com...] and [google.com...]

[google.com...]

Ann

[g1smd]

The important words there were "...when other pages stop linking to them" I think.

So, unless you can find all the pages that link to your missing content, you'll never get that "page" out of the index?

[g1smd]

Beware of a 301 redirect from non-www to www where the defaultsitename is domain.com and where you are linking to a folder, and where you forget to add the trailing / to the URL in the link.

If you forget the trailing / then your link to www.domain.com/folder will first be redirected to domain.com/folder/ {without www!} before arriving at the required www.domain.com/folder/ page.

The intermediate step, at domain.com/folder/ will kill your listings. Lucklily, this effect is very easy to see if you use Xenu LinkSleuth to check your site: it shows up as reporting double the number of pages (when you generate the sitemap) that you actually have, with half of the pages having a title of "301 Moved".

[ct2000]

@reseller

thanks for that - not very clear on the console page ;)

[ann]

Just be sure it returns a true 404 page without the 200 and they should be removed by using the removal tool.

Ann

[ann]

I just delete the pages and by the time they get a few file not founds the pages are out of the serps.

Ann