We've put up a new site to replace an old site, on the same URL, and actually gone as far as to use google custom search as the search engine embedded into the site. Our problem is that Google still remembers all the pages from the old site which means any searches pull up results from the new site as well as dead links from the old.

Is there any way we can tell Google to clear the old pages from its database? There was several hundred pages of indexed content in the old site (a load of asp generated pages that were fully indexed), so I'm hoping there's a simpler way than manually submitting each page to a removal tool!

We've left it a few weeks, and Google is crawling the site regularly, so the passive approach does not appear to be working :confused:

For pages that still exist, but at a new address, use a 301 redirect to point to the new page. Make sure not to use a 302. For old pages that are totally gone, use a 410 error message. this will clear up the mess at google and be good for your users as well.

That sounds fine in theory, in practice (the amount of work involved) could cause a problem. To be honest I've no idea how many pages the old site had - lets see ...

If I do a 'site:www.mysitename.com' search in google, that pulls back around 612 page results. All of the old pages on the site had the .asp extension, so trying 'site:www.mysitename.com .asp' gives me 405 pages, all from the old site. So if that quick test is valid the old site had 405 pages indexed by google, and I'm not sure I could stomach setting up a 301 or 410 redirect for each. I can see the benefit of 301's for the key pages, but not every old news article and sub sub page google has indexed.

Is there a more blanket approach? Perhaps related to all the old pages having the .asp extension? Or am I just looking for a one-click solution where there isn't one ... if I do have to do this by manually redirecting each page, has anyone got any workflow tips to tackle this in an efficient manner?

I wouldn't mind so much if we weren't trying to use google's custom search as the site's search engine :rolleyes:

>(the amount of work involved) could cause a problem

I guess you have to decide which is the larger problem. Normally when changing over a site, you have to do some planning and if naming conventions, rewrites or whatever will keep you from scripting it, you should make a 301 list as you go along.


>Is there any way we can tell Google to clear the old pages from its database

Yes, but be careful.

https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=sitemaps&passive=true&nui=1&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters% 2Ftools%2Fremovals&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fwebmasters% 2Ftools%2Fremovals&ltmpl=urlremoval&hl=en