Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have been trying to seek advice as to whether I should ask Google, via webmaster tools, to delete the results that it has listed for my site - from it's old structure.
I have set out the full detail in Google's webmaster group, but didn't only got a reply from someone who claimed to be not very knowledgable.
Basically, the site was given a new structure a week ago and Googlebot has taken over 1.2gb from the new structure since then. But all the search results (we've been in since 2005, so not really surprising) point to the old structure urls....so go nowhere.
My questions: is it worth deleting them, and when will the spidered new structure replace the old results in the list otherwise?
Thanks for any help.
Dilip
[edited by: tedster at 4:51 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2008]
I'd suggest adding a robots.txt disallow rule for the old url pattern first, and then using that form of url removal request. Just relying on the individual 404 responses might be quite tedious.
There is also the added approach of using a 301 redirect from the old pattern to the new pattern. That will have the advantage of preserving all your backlink power, as well as helping anyone who has bookmarked your pages. for that reason, the redirect would be a much prefered way to handle things.
Even though some of the old urls may still appear in the search results for many weeks, those links will now work for the end user while Google adapts. Also, using a robots.txt rule along with a 301 redirect will stop the spidering of your old urls much faster.
Thank you for a clear, quick and helpful answer.
Regards
Dilip
