URL Re-writes and Google Indexing

Question

I was asked to perform some URL re-writes for a new site with numerous dynamic pages and this has all worked fine.

However when I look at the URLs that Google has indexed, it has indexed the 'non-rewrite' url, so all the '?', '&' etc are being used.

What do you have to do to force Google to index your re-written URLs?

I just assumed it would do this automatically and never expected it to be an issue.

All help is gratefully appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Steps 1) Make sure that expired pages are no longer publicly accessible 2) Anything you do not wish Bots to crawl should be flagged with appropriate "nofollow" meta tags 3) Submit a new sitemap to your Google Web developer account 4) Make sure your Website throws a 404 error when a page isn't found. It is always a good idea to make a splash page for a 404 error which links back to your home page. (this is accomplished different ways across different server-side languages)

Google will automatically remove indexed pages if they no longer exist.. So be patient.