# Strategies to resolve indexed URL conflicts in Discourse
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [June 4, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880 "2025-06-04T17:22:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@MihirR](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MihirR)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 5:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880/1 "2025-06-04T17:22:19Z")
Hi all,
I’m running a Discourse forum and need help with a major SEO + indexing issue after a rebuild.
### What Happened:
- My original Discourse forum **crashed** , and I lost **around 10,000 topics**.
- I rebuilt the forum **from scratch** , keeping the **same domain** and **same Google Search Console (GSC)** property.
- Since Discourse uses **incremental topic IDs** , the newly created topics are now **reusing old topic IDs** (e.g., `/t/783`previously belonged to a deleted topic, and now it’s assigned to a new one).
### Current Problems:
1. GSC shows over **12,000 “Crawled - Not Indexed”** URLs.
2. Old topic URLs like `/t/old-topic-title/783` are still **indexed or being crawled**.
3. These URLs now point to **new content** (e.g., `/t/new-topic-title/783`), which causes **title mismatches** in search and possibly triggers **duplicate/thin content penalties**.
4. Some old topic URLs are **still being served (not 404 or 410)** and are merging with current topics that have the same ID.
5. The **sitemap includes reused IDs** , confusing crawlers further.
What should I do to solve it?
---
### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880/2 "2025-06-04T18:33:23Z")
In postgres you could manually set the topic ID sequence to a high value, e.g. 20000, so that new topics start at that number:
```plaintext
SELECT setval('topics_id_seq', 20000, false);
```
> [@MihirR](#):
>
> My original Discourse forum **crashed**
You lost the server itself? 😢
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### Author:  [@MihirR](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MihirR)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 6:37pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880/3 "2025-06-04T18:37:13Z")
Yup the whole db too.
So I did make a new one, so it already have around 6000 topics so should I from now onwards make it from 20k ?
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 6:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880/4 "2025-06-04T18:46:54Z")
Ideally you would have done that as soon as you created the new site, but it’s too late now.
Better late than never - if that sequence is currently at 6000 and you set it to 20000, the next new topic will have ID 20000 instead of 6000.
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### Author:  [@MihirR](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MihirR)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880/5 "2025-06-04T18:49:08Z")
So it would be like 1-5999 and then 2000 and so on? Right? And hope this won’t cause any issue on further stages?
Or shall I just leave this and with time new topics would overwrite the old one?
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### Author:  [@supermathie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/supermathie)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 6:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880/6 "2025-06-04T18:50:44Z")
The advice is addressing your complaint that old topic IDs are being “reused”. Bumping that sequence up to 20000 will prevent any topics between 6000 and 19999 from being created.
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### Author:  [@MihirR](https://meta.discourse.org/u/MihirR)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2025, 6:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/strategies-to-resolve-indexed-url-conflicts-in-discourse/368880/7 "2025-06-04T18:52:54Z")
Yes, let’s say if it even overwrites with time like 6000 and so on with new topic urls this won’t cause any issue, or can it break something in future.