Member Avatar for Dani

Unless you're awfully new here, you know that this site was recently moved from www.techtalkforums.com over to www.daniweb.com

How can I get Google and the rest of the biggies to re-index daniweb.com with its new content, without spamming the hell outta the engines?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by teedoff

Dani AI

Generated

— what you described (Google crawling the new pages but still showing lots of old URLs and 404s) is exactly what often happens after a move: Google can discover new content quickly but older indexed entries hang around until signals fully transfer, especially when external directories/backlinks still point at the old URLs. is right that it "happens naturally," but there are safe steps that speed cleanup and reduce broken-result noise. (developers.google.com)

Do this first and do it carefully: implement server‑side permanent redirects from each old URL to its exact new equivalent (one-to-one 301 or 308), avoid redirecting everything to the homepage, and eliminate redirect chains. Test a sample of redirects with the URL Inspection tool or a redirect checker. Example (Apache .htaccess, replace with your domains and test before deploying):

# .htaccess — example one-to-one redirect (replace placeholders)
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^oldsite\.example$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://newsite.example/$1 [R=301,L]

Server-side permanent redirects are the recommended way to tell search engines content moved. (developers.google.com)

Use Search Console and sitemaps: verify both old and new properties, submit the new sitemap (or sitemap index), and — if you changed domains — use the Change of Address workflow in Search Console. For urgent cases, the Removals tool can temporarily hide results, but make removals permanent by returning a real 404/410, using noindex, or deleting the content; do not try to hide pages with robots.txt alone. (developers.google.com)

Practical follow-ups: keep redirects in place for at least a year (longer if possible), contact high-value directories/owners to update backlinks, and consider returning 410 Gone for pages you want removed promptly (Google treats 4xx as “gone” and will drop them faster). Monitor Search Console and server logs; expect weeks to months for everything to fully normalize. (developers.google.com)

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Member Avatar for evilmonkey29

It shouldn't take them long for it to happen naturally.

Member Avatar for Dani

Actually, my site has already been spidered multiple times recently by Google. Pages which existed in google linking to techtalkforums.com now reflect the daniweb content. In addition, daniweb content is well-indexed. The problem is that old daniweb content that no longer exists has not been removed. Old techtalk pages have not been removed either. Half of the indexed pages in google point to 404 pages, while the other half are updated.

Member Avatar for Dani

It's almost 2 months later and nothing's changed. :( Unfortunately, the old daniweb content (which was a dog site from when I was 15 years old!) is still listed in many hand-edited directories. In fact, an alexa backlink search finds almost 100 links from other dog sites!! Certainly that will hurt my PR! (as the content is irrelevant)

Member Avatar for Conceitodigital

I agree, it'll happen naturally!

Member Avatar for teedoff

wow this post is 7 years old?? lol ummm did your new Daniweb site get re-indexed naturally now? lol

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