Correct way to handle change of URL path in Google Search Console

Question

I have a website that is well tracked by google search. Every links on the sitemap are crawled and indexed on the search console.

I have a slight adjustment on my website, and it costs me to change the URL path of a few pages (only the URL path, the domain is not changed).

https://mywebsite.com/the-previous-path.html

// changed to

https://mywebsite.com/the-new-path.html

The URL path change is affecting the SEO of my website. whenever someone performs a search on google using relevant keyword then the old URL is still the one that shows up (it's expected).

I put some redirection on the backend to avoid problems. so anyone who is accessing the old path will be automatically redirected to the new path (301 Moved Permanently).

my question is how to like replace the old URL path on the search console with the new one. I've resubmitted my sitemap.xml contains the URL adjustment, but I still see that the path is not indexed, even after more than a week.

I want whenever someone performs a search using a relevant keyword, the new URL path is the one that shows up, not the old one. how can I achieve that?

Answer 1

There is nothing special you have to do in Google Search Console. There are no special features for changing your URL paths built into Google Search Console. The only special feature built into to Google Search Console for URL changes is the Change of Address Tool. It is for domain name changes and can't be used for URL path changes.

You just need to give it time. Expect the change to take at least two weeks. If the page isn't very popular and doesn't have many external links pointing to it, the change could take longer, even several months. In the meantime, your visitors get to the correct place. Your 301 Permanent redirect automatically takes users that get to the old URL from Google to the new URL.