I Changed Permalinks and Now Google Is De-Indexed

Changing your permalinks may affect your Google ranking.

A permanent link, known as a “permalink,” is the archived location of a blog or forum post. When Google indexes your website, it will attribute the content to the permalink of the page when the search engine indexes it. Changing your permalink structure may result in your website being deindexed by Google temporarily.

Time

Immediately after you change your permalinks, your Google-based referrals may drop significantly. Google will eventually re-index your pages under the updated URL but the length of time for this process will vary depending on when Google indexes the new pages and how many pages the name change affects. You have no guarantee that the amount of traffic generated from these updated URLs will be the same as before the change.

Resubmit

You can manually submit your Web pages to Google using the Add URL tool. You can also use Google Webmaster tools to submit claim and submit a site map of your new permalinks to re-index your new site structure on Google.

Redirect

Google may retain your old link structure and send traffic to those old links after your URL change. To take advantage of this traffic, redirect your old links to forward traffic to your new links to ensure that any traffic that goes to your old link through Google does not run into an error page. If you manage your website with a content management system like WordPress or Drupal, you can download redirection plug-ins that not only monitor incoming traffic but can report on any missing pages or errors that your visitors may experience. Otherwise, you will have to place a bit.

Considerations

Whenever possible, use a permalink change to perform search engine optimization (SEO) tasks for your website. If you are using a CMS, use an add-on like All in One SEO for WordPress or SEO Tools for Drupal. These plug-ins help optimize your permalinks and other backend administration to help boost your Google page rank.

References

• Andy Barratt: Changing WordPress Permalinks and Google
• Home Biz Pal: Understanding WordPress Permalinks
• Digging Into WordPress: Optimizing WordPress Permalinks

Resources

• Urban Giraffe: Redirection
• Google Add URL Tool
• Google Webmasters Tools
• Web Source: HTML Redirect Script
• WordPress: All in One SEO Pack
• Drupal: SEO Tools