If you get visits from search engines to those pages it would be crazy to get rid of those links. I would however install the new pages without the query string and try to get as high as possible with as many SE's as possible. Once those new links do their work, you have an alternative and you can get rid of the old links if you want. Most major SE's don't like different links to the same page, so it is actually an advantage of having only one good link to a page. Then again, it's only a disadvantage if you get caught, so you can keep the old link with some spam risk involved.
Robots will revisit your site after a certain time. Most have an interval of about 1 month. If it gets a 404 page not found it will erase that page from the index. That will get rid of the old links automatically. You can get rid of them manually by resubmitting them, but that's a lot of work. If they find the new links, they will index the pages. If some pages are in a search engine, it will get out and get the new pages automatically. Keeping track of the logs is *always* a good idea! BTW: Don't confuse Search Engines with directories. Search Engines use a robot to index the content of your site. Directories like Yahoo en Open Directory (dmoz.com) have humans look at the site and quote it. A clear, good content is all you can do for these guys. Bert At 06:13 13/04/2002 -0400, you wrote: >Bert, > >Thanks for the great read! > >>Part 7: other things you should know >>----------------------------------------------------- >>A. Querystrings (everything behind a ? in the URL) >>Most major search engines hate querystrings. They assume that the query >>strings are used for database access and dynamic page generation. This >>can give them a "black hole" where they eventually index a complete >>database. Altavista clearly states that they will index a page with >>querystrings, but won't follow any links. Google is one of the first to >>start indexing pages with querystrings. They are very coutious and will >>go only a certain levels. > >Now that we can effectively rewrite page URLs without query strings using >C2, do you think it's simply a matter of resubmitting to search engines to >remove any existing search engine links to the "old" pages? In the >meantime, I suppose we could leave up a pipeline up, that maps the old >URLs with query strings to the new URL without query strings (and monitor >logs to determine when/if to delete them down the road.) > >Would that be your approach for updating old sites? > >Diana > > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
