Google’s John Mueller has strong words against changing URLs for SEO reasons alone. He basically said that in most cases changing the url hurts his SEO badly and he shouldn’t change the url just for SEO reasons.
This was covered on two different sites. One is Reddit and the other is twitter during the same 24-hour period.
John wrote on Reddit: Maybe don’t even copy and paste. Will the changes harm the site for some time before being reworked? Maybe.some risk + usually no benefit = …?”
This is a strong word against changing URLs for SEO reasons…
Then John wrote twitter “If you want to change the URL, you have to do a redirect per page. There is no maximum number of redirects per site. And you’re probably shooting yourself for a while because you’re not getting any tangible benefit.” There is a real reason to change the URL, not a selfish one.” “Good for SEO” reasons.
Maybe even a strong word against URL changes.
I also don’t like changing URLs for SEO reasons. In fact, I didn’t want to change these URLs for SEO reasons, so the old articles on this site still have the original URL structure. I often go to great lengths to avoid changing URLs for SEO or other reasons, even if it’s more of a developer burden.
Forum discussion on Reddit and twitter.
