Question

I just updated my website like 2 days ago and now it has new URL’s to reach different pages. However google still have my old pages as results when you search my website. This pages now go to a 404 page and would like google to index the new pages. Is there a way to help google do this? Like creating a sitemap? But what is a sitemap? I have like 5 pages on the site so if it’s just a file where you can write the URL’s of the pages it would be a simple task to do.

Answer 1

Yeah, sitemaps should do what you need. It is a way of listing all the pages in your website, so that Google knows about ones especially that its spider may not find. You can find details about it, including links to instructions on creating your sitemap, here:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184

There are no guarantees with regards to the sitemap though, like that Google will actually search the new pages.

Google doesn’t guarantee that we’ll crawl or index all of your URLs. However, we use the data in your Sitemap to learn about your site’s structure, which will allow us to improve our crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future. In most cases, webmasters will benefit from Sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it.

Just wondering though, why don’t you just create pages at the old URLs that redirect to the new ones? It seems like that would be better than 404ing.