4

Google search results is showing an old outdated version of my site, some of which is no longer there or different page urls.

Do they automatically update their search index or do i have to do something to get it updated?

Plus if it is auto, how long does it usually take?

Thanks.

FoxyFish
  • 874
  • 1
  • 12
  • 21

2 Answers2

3

You should be able to ask google to re-index your site.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

  1. sign in
  2. click on your site (if not added then go through the process to add your site)
  3. click "add/test sitemap"
  4. give the url of the new sitemap
  5. click submit sitemap
james31rock
  • 2,615
  • 2
  • 20
  • 25
  • What to do even if re-indexing fails. I've done it twice but yet the same old results pop up. And, more irritating stuff is, 40 links are indexed out of 52 submitted (including images and attachments). – Hari Harker Jul 22 '16 at 11:08
  • @HariHarker what happened with this in the end? – nmit026 Aug 18 '17 at 05:12
  • 1
    @nmit026 Give it some time. Actually 30 - 45 days or so and if you have done it properly, it would reappear in the search listing. Also, **don't forget to mention 301 redirects** in your `.htaccess` file for all those links that have shifted to the new url. – Hari Harker Aug 18 '17 at 10:54
  • @HariHarker all that computing power and it takes Google more than a month??? Hope it doesn't take that long. I'm having this problem: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45748382/old-parking-page-info-is-mixed-in-with-search-results-for-a-newly-crawled-site – nmit026 Aug 18 '17 at 23:07
2

Do they automatically update their search index or do i have to do something to get it updated? ... Plus if it is auto, how long does it usually take?

Historically, google was using their home-brewed mapReduce functionality to rebuild their search engine every few days, which caused this type of behavior. It was / is automatic, meaning you dont have to do anything special to cause google to update their index of your site, in particular.

However, according to a new wired article about their "Colossus" product, they're no longer doing that intervalled mapReduce, and now are favoring a more real-time index rebuilding algorithm.

With that said, the jury is still out on how quickly one can reliably expect their site to be re-indexed. You may just wait and see, and take a benchmark about it once google does update your content. Then publish an article about it... you'll be famous. ;)

Kristian
  • 21,204
  • 19
  • 101
  • 176