Google: Sometimes Swapping 404 URLs Out To Get Indexed Faster May Help

Google’s John Mueller said that sometimes “swapping out the URL can certainly help” when that URL has been 404ed or noindexed for a while. He said “sometimes our systems are so used to a URL not “working” (noindex, 404, etc) that it can take a bit of time to get back.”

John added that “in most cases you wouldn’t need to though.”

But I guess if you are having huge difficulty getting content that was previously 404ed or noindexed back into Google’s index, making a new URL for that content and 301ing that old URL to it, might be the answer.

Here is the context of that tweet:

Sometimes our systems are so used to a URL not “working” (noindex, 404, etc) that it can take a bit of time to get back, so swapping out the URL can certainly help. In most cases you wouldn’t need to though.

Also, even if you didn’t use the removal tools, I’d double-check there.

— ? John ? (@JohnMu) August 6, 2020

You can also try to force Google to recrawl it via the URL Inspection tool, submit to index or XML Sitemaps.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

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