Why isn't a 301 redirect removing old style URLs from Google's index?
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I have two questions:1 - We changed the URL structure of our site. Old URLs were in the format of kiwiforsale.com/used_fruit/yummy_kiwi. These URLs are 301 redirected to kiwiforsale.com/used-fruit/yummy-kiwi. We are getting duplicate content errors in Google Webmaster Tools. Why isn't the 301 redirect removing the old style URL out of Google's index?2 - I tried to remove the old style URL at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals, however I got the message that "We think the image or web page you're trying to remove hasn't been removed by the site owner. Before Google can remove it from our search results, the site owner needs to take down or update the content."Why are we getting this message? Doesn't the 301 redirect alert Google that the old style URL is toast and it's gone?
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Point 1 - it takes some time before Google takes redirects into account - if you changed the structure recently, it can take several weeks before these duplicates are removed from Webmastertools. I assume you have already checked that these url's are indeed 301 redirected by testing them with web-sniffer.net and/or Fetch like Google.
Point 2 - you can only remove content in the following cases (source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?rd=1
- content is removed and generates a 404 - as you redirect the old style url to the new one it's generating a 301 & not 404 so removal is not possible this way
- the content that needs to be removed is blocked in the robots.txt - which I guess is not the case for you
rgds,
Dirk
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It is possible that you still have it in the sitemaps. Did you check that?
Gr., Keszi
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