How to get google to reindex my site?

[carsten888]

I have changed settings in sef-urls and now loads of links in google are going to 404.

How do I tell google to reindex (part of) my site?

I have just spend an hour in Googles webmaster section. Each time i have to find stuff on their site, I am surprised at how difficult/impossible it is to find, (particulary because they are a search engine:-)

[momogi]

This is what I do:
If you have already submit site map to gwt, just delete it and submit your new site map.

Later on you maybe want to know:
How to get google deindex my site (including cache)?

[carsten888]

I have not made a sitemap yet. if I do submit a sitemap, will google then delete all broken links?

[tedster]

No, just because a URL does not appear in your sitemap doesn't mean Google will drop it from the index.

Did you set up a 301 redirect from the old versions of your URLs to the new ones? If you did, then it's just a matter of patience. But if you didn't and the old URLs still get served the page with no redirect, then it's time to implement the 301s.

[carsten888]

I can not possibly make redirects for those thousands of urls.

Its the sef urls from a forum. I changed to another sef-component, so the urls of everything in the forum has changed.

I signed up for googles webmaster tools, added the site, got it confirmed, and had a look at the 404's recorded by google. So google knows those links to the forum are 404.
Does google drop the old urls next time the site is indexed?

[momogi]

To lighten your effort, just redirect the top 20 or 50 of 404 links.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Redirect would be the best solution as if you have links pointing to these 404 pages, Google will find them.

Try to block them using Robots.txt and see if you can exclude them (probably some top URL's) using Webmaster Tools URL exclusion.

[carsten888]

Try to block them using Robots.txt

if I block the whole forum, google won't show any links to the forum at all, so that is no option either.

[tedster]

Does google drop the old urls next time the site is indexed?

If there are no links still using those URLs, then Webmaster Tools will eventually drop them, but not right away. Check the links on the right that show you the pages where those links occur. If they are now changed, then you are OK.

[TheMadScientist]

I find it hard to believe you cannot possibly redirect the URLs... It's a forum, so there almost has to be a way to retrieve the information from the URL to know what to show. This is true of either version of the URL.

If you cannot figure out how to do it with mod_rewrite, then I suggest PHP (or whatever lang. you are comfortable with). Using here as an example, if Brett used to use the title of an article as the URL identifier and decided to switch to numbers as they are now the average person would have a very difficult time redirecting with mod_rewrite, because the title doesn't readily correspond to the number in the URL, but I bet it would be fairly (okay, relatively) easy with DataBase access, because usually if you can identify the content with one URL and you can display the same content on another URL there is a way to build the second URL using the information provided in the content of the first URL... If not, IMO the move was not very well thought through.

Anyway, I agree with the people who say to redirect, and for you to say it's not possible really surprises me, because, IMO it should be. If you can show the same content on two different URLs you have to have a way to identify the content via URL somehow, so if you can identify the content on both URLs, then IMO you should be able to identify both versions of the URL based on the content, because they both have to relate to the same content in some way... All you have to do is work the other way.

URL A = Content 1
URL B = Content 1

The shorter version is:
IMO There almost has to be a way determine URL A = Content 1 = URL B, because to select the same information from the same database there has to be some sort of consistency between each URL and the data selected, and if there's not, then you could create one fairly easily... I can about guarantee you there's a relatively easy way to redirect your old URLs to the new locations.

<added>
If you can still create both versions of the URLs with the content 301 redirecting can be done via server-side scripting... I'm thinking PHP here, not mod_rewrite, which is what I would normally use, but not in this case.
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[carsten888]

for you to say it's not possible really surprises me, because, IMO it should be

O yeah, it is possible to make custom redirects for thousands of urls, but it would take days if not weeks to copy-paste all url that show in the 404 log and find the appropriate working url that matches it.

I agree with you that checking the url with php and then scripting towards the new url is an option, however, that also is a lot of work.

What would be easyest was a button on the google webmaster-tools page 'reindex my site'. That would save hours of work and make google work better. That is why I started this thread. I am flabegasted there does not appear to be any of such functionality.

[tedster]

Here's an approach I've used successfully in a few cases. You can redirect the important previous URLs, those that were entry page because of backlinks, search traffic or direct navigation. That you continue to circulate important backlink juice and also serve your regular visitors who come in from a bookmark.

[TheMadScientist]

Yeah, what tedster said, and the 'reindex' button is really a 301. What I would be more worried about than the 404s in WMT is the loss of inbound links. You lose every single one to the old URLs, so if the forum is the majority of the site then you have lost most of the 'weight' of links into the site and it's much more like starting a new site than moving an existing one to a different set of URLs.

I have a WMT account (I think) on one site (I think) but I really don't care what G has to say in there nearly as much as I care to follow standards and if you move a page and want it to be indexed in place of another page and you want the links to the page you relocated to move, then protocol states you need to use a 301 redirect.

What you are saying is analogous to a dentist moving from one office to another, not telling the phone company to change the address and YellowPage ad, then asking us how to how to get the phone companies to show the right ad... You'd have to let the phone company know you've moved, and really should do the same thing for Google, Bing and Yahoo... You moved the content and didn't tell anyone, so what you have now is not seen as a direct replacement, because you didn't tell anyone it should be.

<added>
If you find a good coder they should be able to redirect all your old URLs to the new ones in a couple hours or so (at most)... IOW It shouldn't cost you more than $200 even if they're 'top dollar' to have someone do it for you.
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