Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How long will Google take to stop crawling an old URL once it has been 301 redirected
-
I need to do a clean-up old urls that have been redirected in sitemap and was wondering about this.
-
I agree with Ryan. As long as the old URLs are out there in the web, Google will follow them.
At the same time, redirected URL list will be very lengthy if you are maintaining a big site and maintaining them will consume your resources.
Check link value of the old URLs as a first step. If they have no value then you will be fine to retire such old URLs.
-
Google's crawler will always attempt to crawl any links it finds. If somewhere on the internet there is a link to an old URL and Google sees that link, it will never stop trying to explore that link. Each time it attempts to crawl the link, it will see the 301 and follow the redirect, but if you ever remove that redirect then the original URL will be seen.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 redirect syntax for htaccess
I'm working on some htaccess redirects for a few stray pages and have come across a few different varieties of 301s that are confusing me a bit....Most sources suggest: Redirect 301 /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html or using some combination of: RewriteRule + RewriteCond + RegEx I've also found examples of: RedirectPermanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html I'm confused because our current htaccess file has quite a few (working) redirects that look like this: Redirect permanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html This syntax seems to work, but I'm yet to find another Redirect permanent in the wild, only examples of Redirect 301 or RedirectPermanent Is there any difference between these? Would I benefit at all from replacing Redirect permanent with Redirect 301?
Technical SEO | | SamKlep1 -
How long does Google takes to re-index title tags?
Hi, We have carried out changes in our website title tags. However, when I search for these pages on Google, I still see the old title tags in the search results. Is there any way to speed this process up? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
I have multiple URLs that redirect to the same website. Is this an issue?
I have multiple URLs that all lead to the same website. Years ago they were purchased and were sitting dormant. Currently they are 301 redirects and each of the URLs feed to different areas of my website. Should I be worried about losing authority? And if so, is there a better way to do this?
Technical SEO | | undrdog990 -
How google crawls images and which url shows as source?
Hi, I noticed that some websites host their images to a different url than the one their actually website is hosted but in the end google link to the one that the site is hosted. Here is an example: This is a page of a hotel in booking.com: http://www.booking.com/hotel/us/harrah-s-caesars-palace.en-gb.html When I try a search for this hotel in google images it shows up one of the images of the slideshow. When I click on the image on Google search, if I choose the Visit Page button it links to the url above but the actual image is located in a totally different url: http://r-ec.bstatic.com/images/hotel/840x460/135/13526198.jpg My question is can you host your images to one site but show it to another site and in the end google will lead to the second one?
Technical SEO | | Tz_Seo0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
302 or 301 redirect to https ?
I am redirecting whole site to https. Is there a difference between 302 or 301 redirect for seo? Site never been indexed. Planning to do that with .htaccess command RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
Technical SEO | | Kotkov
RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L] There are plenty of ways http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/ssl-example-usage-in-htaccess.html Which way would be the best? Thanks is advance0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | | steffen_0 -
If a redirecting URL has more value than the website should I move it?
Client has two website addresses: Website A is a redirect to Website B. It has one indexed page. But this is the URL being used in collateral. It has the majority of back links, and citations everywhere list Website A as the URL. Website B is where the actual website lives. Google recognizes and indexes the 80+ pages. This website has very few backlinks going to it. This setup does not seem good for SEO. Moreover, the analytics data is completely messed up because Website B shows that the biggest referral source is... you guessed it Website A. I'm thinking going forward, I should: Move all the content from Website B to Website A. Setup Website B to permanently 301 Redirect to Website A. Is that the best course of action?
Technical SEO | | flowsimple0