Google Says Don’t Change URLs and Change Them Back For SEO Testing

Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter he would recommend again changing URLs and then changing them back, and repeating that, for SEO reasons. The individual wanted to do that for SEO testing but generally, with SEO, changing URLs, is not a recommended strategy unless you are fixing an issue of some sorts.

One you start changing URLs, that new URL has to get all of its own new signals. Of course, you can redirect the old URL to the new URL, but if you are just changing the URL to test things, and then plan to change it back, that is probably a bad idea.

John said on Twitter “I’d avoid temporarily changing URLs and changing them back, so if you could show the new page on the current URL, that would probably be both easier for search, and a clearer signal for you in terms of how search would respond (removes the page-move messiness).”

Here is the context:

Can you elaborate? It sounds like using the better page would be good overall?

— 🦝 John (personal) 🦝 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2022

So whats the impact of sending 100% bot and users traffic to a test page when you still want to keep the original indexed ? We are still set up with a 302 and a canonicle to the original page just the test will get 100% traffic .

— Mark Stroud (@markstroudSEO) April 11, 2022

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I’d avoid temporarily changing URLs and changing them back, so if you could show the new page on the current URL, that would probably be both easier for search, and a clearer signal for you in terms of how search would respond (removes the page-move messiness).

— 🦝 John (personal) 🦝 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.