I meant that a 404 is the signal for th robot to remove the file from the index. A 301 is, wrongly, interpreted as a "meta refresh" 307. The meta refresh is used in a technique where a page containing a meta refresh is optimized for a specific, very popular, keyword is promoted but the visitor is redirected to a completely different content. ex. You search for "Britmey Spears", but get redirected to a page about spaghetti. Search engines want to give good relevant results, so they hate this technique. You can get listed as a spammer for this. Although technically a 301 is more correct, it's not good for SEO! Don't use it unless SEO is not important for the site. Bert
At 10:46 14/04/2002 +1200, you wrote: >Don't use a 404 to signal that a URL has changed: use a 301 "Moved >Permanently". >http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html#sec10.3.2 > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Bert Van Kets [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Sunday, 14 April 2002 08:57 > > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: Re: Search Engine Optimization and Cocoon (long!) > > > > > > 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] > > > > > > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
