I recently submitted a sitemap.xml in Google's Webmaster Tools and some of the pages already got indexed. The problem now is, that I cleaned my URLs with MOD_REWRITE in the .htaccess file afterwards and I would like the new ones to be indexed. The old ones should be removed from the Google Index.Indexed Page:www.example.com/article.php?=article=this%is%an%exampleNew URL:www.example.com/article-this-is-an-exampleDo I even have to remove them manually from the index in any way or do they refresh if Google crawls my new sitemap? I really wan't to prevent duplicate content.Thanks in advance.
Changing URLs in Google's Index
seo;google search console;google search;googlebot;google index
First things first.Of your wrong URLs, make sure you are using a 301 redirect to the right URL and not just rewriting them.Make sure your links are correct.Update your sitemap so that it is correct.Then wait. And wait some more. Light a smoke and grab a beer or two.Update your site as you would normally while you wait.Just know that it will take some time for the wrong URLs to drop from the index. There is nothing you can do to hurry up a search engine and Google does get mad if you try. It will work out. I did something similar about 2-3 years ago with about 300,000 pages and it took about 6 months before I felt I could remove the 301s and let the old URLs 404. I probably could have done it sooner, but I wanted to make absolutely sure that Google had all the new URLs or as much as is reasonable. It all worked out fine for me and it will for you too.