Had 2 urls for one article how long 301 redirect will clean up SERPs?

[born2run]

So I goofed up bigtime. I now found that in the Google search, my each article was being indexed as the alias url and also the technical url (as in: example.com/node/474799884 )

So to fix this, I did an automatic programmed redirect 301 for thousands of such articles, which basically did 301 redirect of all my technical urls to the alias url properly.

So my question is how long this will take effect in the Google search index database? Do I need to submit a reindex whole site via Google Search Console? Please advise! Thanks!

[not2easy]

You should submit a new sitemap whenever there are major URL changes.

[born2run]

Ok thanks and what about re-submit to Google Search Console for re-indexing? (Google Webmaster tool ie). Thanks!

[born2run]

Also, how to create a sitemap for free? I have about thousands of urls (content articles). Any good searvice to make the sitemap? Paid or free..?

[not2easy]

I do not see a way to "re-submit" thousands of URLs in GSC. If these are existing URLs that have been indexed, they do not need re-submitting. You can try "Fetch as Google" on a few of them, but I don't know of any benefit to requesting indexing on an indexed page.

[not2easy]

Platform? For sitemap recommendations you might try our site search? (upper right corner)

[born2run]

Not many new posts from WebmasterWorld search regarding sitemap generators.. :-(

[born2run]

Screaming frog is expensive! and it's a license for one year only..

[not2easy]

If your site is a Wordpress site, check the list of recommended plugins: [webmasterworld.com...]

If it is not a Wordpress site, you would need to be more specific regarding the platform you are working with. The right answer for static html is not the right answer for a Joomla site.

[phranque]

try Xenu's Link Sleuth

[born2run]

Using Drupal CMS.

[lucy24]

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about what a sitemap does and does not do.

If Google follows links from your front page, will it eventually find all pages under their preferred URL? If a search engine can't find them, neither can humans.

Do any links point to the non-preferred form of any URL?

Has Google been crawling these preferred URLs?

[browndog]

I had this problem when I switched from m.dot to responsive. All my old urls bounced, a redirect was set up but that just sent them to the homepage (which is why I suspect Google now says my mobile traffic is invalid).


I waited 2-3 weeks and then sat down with mobile phone in hand, and a long list of all my posts on the desktop and 'forced' Google to re-crawl any site still showing as m.dot. It was probably a good 2-3 days of that, and the ridiculous validation (the more urls you force Google to crawl, the more validating it makes you do). To their credit, they were very quick to come along and re-index those old mobile urls and everything is good now (apart from them still not recognising my mobile traffic as valid that is).

[lucy24]

a redirect was set up but that just sent them to the homepage

Please tell us this has now been fixed.

[browndog]

Yes, all urls are working as they should and going to the correct pages. I do think that was the source of all my woes with Google telling me 2/3rds of my traffic (which incidentally is the same percentage as mobile/desktop traffic) is invalid. Despite it now being fixed, they are still saying it's invalid :(

[phranque]

I had this problem when I switched from m.dot to responsive. All my old urls bounced, a redirect was set up but that just sent them to the homepage (which is why I suspect Google now says my mobile traffic is invalid

I do think that was the source of all my woes with Google telling me 2/3rds of my traffic (which incidentally is the same percentage as mobile/desktop traffic) is invalid. Despite it now being fixed, they are still saying it's invalid

if you are still doing a mass redirect of urls to the home page you are asking for problems.
requests for the m.example.com urls should either be 1-to-1 301 redirected to the equivalent new (responsive) urls or get 410 status code responses.
is this what you are now doing?

[browndog]

Google has now re-indexed all of the mobile urls so if you search for blue widgets, you are taken to the blue widget page, if you search for green widgets, you get taken to the green widget page.

[born2run]

not2easy yes, I submitted new sitemaps for my entire site (url and images)..

[born2run]

How long does Google's index take to update if you updated like 20000 urls on the site? Thanks!

[lucy24]

How long does Google's index take to update

Depends entirely on your site and on the individual pages within that site. If it's an active thread at WebmasterWorld: about five minutes. If it's a page on my personal site: two or three days for the most popular pages, extending to months for the more obscure pages.

If it's a global change like http to https, things may change all at once. (Quick detour to logs suggests about a week and a half for the changeover to be complete. So even there it doesn't happen all at once.)