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        URL structure change and xml sitemap

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        • ang
          ang last edited by

          At the end of April we changed the url structure of most of our pages and 301 redirected the old pages to the new ones. The xml sitemaps were also updated at that point to reflect the new url structure. Since then Google has not indexed the new urls from our xml sitemaps and I am unsure of why. We are at 4 weeks since the change, so I would have thought they would have indexed the pages by now. Any ideas on what I should check to make sure pages are indexed?

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Daniel_Marks
            Daniel_Marks last edited by

            Hi there,

            This is odd, 4 weeks is a long time and something is likely going wrong. Are you positive that your 301s have been implemented correctly? Have you received any messages in Search Console/GWT that are relevant?

            I would also do as Ikkie suggests and submit prominent URLs which have yet to be indexed here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6259634?hl=en

            Please let me know if these checks fail or if you'd like to PM me the URL and I'll take a closer look.

            Hope this helps,

            Daniel

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Mustansar
              Mustansar last edited by

              It's just your sitemap index file which is showing pending??
              if that is the case then, All it needs to do is addup the values of your other sitemaps (which are referenced in the index file) and show the total stats next to it.

              Other than that you can submit your site to be index from GWT. See the guidelines here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6259634?hl=en

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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