Google Still Indexing Old Shopify URLs? Here's How to Nudge It Along!

Hey fellow store owners! I recently jumped into a fantastic discussion in the Shopify community that really resonated with a common pain point: Google being stubbornly slow to drop old URLs, even after you’ve set up your 301 redirects perfectly. Our friend Emily, like many of us, was seeing old product and collection URLs lingering in Google Search Console and even popping up in search results.

If you’ve ever found yourself scratching your head, wondering if you did something wrong, or if Google just has it out for your perfectly planned site reorganization, you’re definitely not alone. The good news? The community weighed in with some seriously solid advice, and it boils down to a mix of best practices and a little bit of patience. Let's dive into what we learned.

It's Not Just You: Google's Stubborn Streak

The overwhelming consensus from the experts and experienced store owners in the thread was, "This is totally normal." Google, for all its sophistication, can be quite slow to catch up. As Lyn-Bui, SectionKit, and others pointed out, it can take weeks, or even months, for Google to fully process redirects and remove old URLs from its index. Especially if those old pages had strong backlinks or a lot of traffic, Google isn't in a rush to forget about them.

The core reason is that Google only drops an old URL once it actually recrawls it, sees the 301 redirect, and understands that the page has permanently moved. Low-traffic pages, in particular, get recrawled less frequently, so they can hang around in the index longer.

Your Action Plan: Nudging Google Along

While patience is a virtue here, there are several proactive steps you can take to encourage Google to speed things up. Think of it as giving Google a gentle, but firm, nudge.

1. Verify Your 301 Redirects Are Flawless

First things first: double-check that your redirects are indeed true 301s. Shopify's built-in URL redirects are proper 301s, but if you’ve used an app or custom code, lumine suggested checking with a curl -I [old-URL] command to ensure it returns a 301 status. A 302 (temporary) redirect or a JavaScript redirect won't tell Google the page has moved permanently, leading to lingering old URLs.

Also, ecommdecoded wisely warned against redirect chains (Old URL → URL B → URL C). Keep it simple: Old URL → New URL directly.

2. Ruthlessly Clean Up Internal Links

This was a huge point brought up by almost everyone, from bchen27 to PieLab. Internal links are often the silent culprits! If your own site (blog posts, collection descriptions, menu items, footer links, etc.) still points to old URLs, Google sees these as signals that the old page is still relevant. It’ll keep re-crawling them, slowing down the transition.

How to find them:

• Manual Check: Go through your main navigation, blog posts, and important collection/product descriptions.
• Site Search: Use your site's internal search or even Google's site:yourdomain.com "old-url-slug" to find mentions.
• Crawlers: Tools like Screaming Frog (as bchen27 mentioned) can crawl your site and report broken or redirected internal links.

3. Update and Resubmit Your XML Sitemap

Your sitemap tells Google which pages are important on your site. Faron_hm, Gimmesales, and NKCreativeSoulutions all highlighted this as a critical step. Make sure your XML sitemap only contains your new, correct URLs and that all the old, outdated ones are removed. Then, resubmit this updated sitemap through Google Search Console.

Google prioritizes sitemap submissions when re-crawling, so this helps accelerate the discovery of your new URLs and the understanding that the old ones are gone.

4. Leverage Google Search Console's Tools

GSC is your best friend here. Several community members provided excellent advice on using its features:

• URL Inspection Tool:

  • For Old URLs: Paste an old URL into the inspection tool. As lumine suggested, if it says "Page with redirect," you're good; it's just waiting to fall out of the index. If it still shows the old content as indexed, then you have a deeper issue with your redirect or internal links.
  • For New URLs: Request indexing for your important new URLs. This encourages Google to visit them sooner.

• Removals Tool: If you need an old URL gone fast (e.g., it's causing a serious issue), bchen27, SectionKit, and ecommdecoded recommended using the Removals tool in GSC. This provides a temporary (about 6-month) hide from search results while Google catches up with your 301s. Vineet from IdentixWeb (Gimmesales) suggested using this sparingly, only for serious issues, as 301s are the long-term solution.

5. Patience, Grasshopper!

After you’ve done everything right, it truly does come down to waiting. Faron_hm mentioned realistically expecting 4-8 weeks for a full transition, with some stubborn URLs taking even longer, especially if they had strong backlink profiles from external sites (which you can't control). Lyn-Bui, rshrivastava63, and others all echoed this sentiment: once you've done the right things, it's mostly a matter of letting Google catch up.

Wrapping It Up

So, if you’re pulling your hair out over old URLs still showing up, take a deep breath. You're experiencing a very common scenario. The key takeaways from the community are clear: ensure your 301 redirects are solid, meticulously clean up any internal links pointing to old pages, update and resubmit your sitemap, and use Google Search Console's tools to request indexing for new pages and, if absolutely necessary, temporarily remove old ones.

By following these steps, you're doing everything in your power to guide Google's crawlers. It won't be an overnight fix, but your persistence will pay off, and your Shopify store's SEO will be cleaner and more accurate in the long run. A big thanks to Emily for starting the conversation and to everyone in the community for sharing their invaluable insights!