Has anyone experienced an issue with removing the placement of articles and the URL indexed in Google not matching the article URL in Zendesk Guide? What recently happened is:
- An article was placed in multiple categories and sections
- We removed the additional placements for only one placement
- When searching for the article, the link in Google search resulted in an error message when clicked
We reviewed the two URLs and the article IDs are not the same, thus the reason for the error message. Is this an issue caused by removing placements of the article or is there something else that resulted in the URL article ID not being aligned?
When removing additional placements of an article in Zendesk Guide, the original article ID should remain unchanged, so URLs differing by article ID usually indicate multiple distinct articles rather than placement changes alone. If Google search results link to URLs with different article IDs that now produce errors, it often means Google indexed multiple similar articles or outdated URLs before the removal. This issue can also be exacerbated by lack of proper redirects from old URLs to the current canonical URL, causing 404 errors. To resolve this, verify there are no duplicate articles with different IDs, implement 301 redirects for removed placement URLs, and use Google Search Console to expedite re-indexing.