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I had a website with a few static pages and hundreds of products, it was indexed for quite a long time. A little while ago I've launched a brand new version of this site. The structure is the same, but there are lot of changes in terms of search appearance (URL is the same).

I wanted to remove completely all of the indexed pages from Google Search using URL removal tool in Search Console, and then ask Google to re-index the page. I did it, but it seemed even though the new version of the site got indexed, it couldn't been displayed at all because the URL removal request was still active.

I've clicked "Reinclude" to cancel that request, and just a couple of hours later the site appears in search results just fine. However, both versions of the site are present. The homepage ("https://example.com") appears twice, with both old and new meta information.

Is there a way to get rid of ONLY old index?

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    why do you want to get rid of index, if structure and URL are the same?
    – Evgeniy
    Commented Nov 12, 2018 at 12:02
  • @Evgeniy Firstly, some categories got deleted, some are renamed now, and most importantly, the meta information of the old version is very poor (random descriptions, titles) - it looks really bad both the old (bad) and new (good) result displays right below each other.
    – Kristián Filo
    Commented Nov 12, 2018 at 14:29
  • When you update your pages, Googlebot will automatically come back and re-crawl your pages and update the search index. There is no reason for you to do anything. Trying to remove your pages from Google will only hurt your rankings and make it take longer for Google to see your new content. Just make your updates and wait a few weeks.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Nov 14, 2018 at 11:28

2 Answers 2

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You used the URL removal tool, but what you were looking for was the Remove Outdated Content Tool.

The former completely removes live URLs from sites you own, whereas the latter notifies Google that content has changed (whether you own the site or not) and asks Google to remove the outdated cache and re-crawl the page faster than they would normally.

With similar names, they are often confused. Use the Remove Outdated Content Tool on your pages with outdated search results and you will be golden.

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It seems to me, you underestimate Google a little bit :) It seems to me again, you land on the secure side, if you:

  • create new sitemap,
  • add it to your robots.txt AND to your search console
  • In case any URL is changed, like you mentioned in comment some categories got deleted, some are renamed now - create a 301 redirect, adding to the sitemap only the new URL, target of the redirect. Note: this should be done only in case of URL change, not title, heading or content change!

Main thing i want to communicate: there is no need to take any action on your side to force Google to replace old URLs set in index to the new set. Specially in case URLs are the same Google is very good in discovering new content.

You can explore, how good Google is in discovering new and updated content through searching for this our thread: it is, in current version, just after small minutes number already in SERPs.

PS: additional, nuclear overkill methode to deindex URLs fast is to add to them the 410 Gone header.

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