Recently went from page 1 to page nowhere after renaming my photo gallery pages to descriptive file names.
About 150/300 filenames were suddenly returning 404 after being deleted and replaced by new descriptive filenames. The spider can find that overnight. I recreated all 300 old filenames and used meta refresh on all 300 of the photo files. After several crawls it's still showing the old files as 404. It sure didn't find my redirects overnight.
I experimentally didn't redirect a few and used the URL removal tool for those. That worked just fine and quickly. But meta-refresh seems to be pretty useless so far. I used meta-refresh on most of them because I thought they might have backlinks that I want to keep.
Do I need also a noindex,nofollow on each of these old filename files to get the spider to see it? What a mess this is! There is no content at all in the old filename files, just the meta-refresh set to 0 and empty body. Is nofollow okay, or is the meta-refresh considered a link that should be followed? You see how crazy I am. I would offhand say no, that's not a link, but who knows?
I saw here that Phil said a simple meta-refresh won't cut it.
Please tell me what to do! This is a nightmare. I did much work to redo those gallery pages and upload that monster gallery on 56K, and now I have no ranking since August 4 because of it.
(Obviously, you replace [myoldpage] and [mynewpage] with filenames that you are using.
Notice that after the [Redirect 301], you state only the filename (or subfolder/filename) of the file you are redirecting from. This MUST be in or below the current folder.
Also note that the .htaccess file can be created/edited with any plain text editor, but you must ensure that the filename is [.htaccess] and there is no filename extension like .txt stuck on the end. (Many editors will default to that and you have to remove the ending if it appears.)
Before you invest too much time and effort in this, try it with just ONE URL in case your hosting company does not allow you to use .htaccess at all.
If you cannot use the .htaccess at all, you could check out whether you can use PHP to issue the 301.
If you are limited to HTML with no server-side scripting language such as PHP or ASP available to you, I have run out of ideas.
> Recently went from page 1 to page nowhere after renaming my photo > gallery pages to descriptive file names.
> About 150/300 filenames were suddenly returning 404 after being > deleted and replaced by new descriptive filenames. The spider can find > that overnight. I recreated all 300 old filenames and used meta > refresh on all 300 of the photo files. After several crawls it's > still showing the old files as 404. It sure didn't find my redirects > overnight.
> I experimentally didn't redirect a few and used the URL removal tool > for those. That worked just fine and quickly. But meta-refresh seems > to be pretty useless so far. I used meta-refresh on most of them > because I thought they might have backlinks that I want to keep.
> Do I need also a noindex,nofollow on each of these old filename files > to get the spider to see it? What a mess this is! There is no content > at all in the old filename files, just the meta-refresh set to 0 and > empty body. Is nofollow okay, or is the meta-refresh considered a link > that should be followed? You see how crazy I am. I would offhand say > no, that's not a link, but who knows?
> I saw here that Phil said a simple meta-refresh won't cut it.
> Please tell me what to do! This is a nightmare. I did much work to > redo those gallery pages and upload that monster gallery on 56K, and > now I have no ranking since August 4 because of it.
If all of Robbo's ideas don't work (try those first!) you could always go back to the 404 option + removal request for those pages that you haven't done it for yet. The problem then would be outdated links of course and there's really no easy way to go around correcting those other than emailing people who have linked there.
Google seems to keep the old files in their system for quite a long time. I'm still waiting (6 months +) for google to stop trying to access a few files which we linked to for a day but then replaced with a trailing slash version....
> (Obviously, you replace [myoldpage] and [mynewpage] with filenames > that you are using.
> Notice that after the [Redirect 301], you state only the filename (or > subfolder/filename) of the file you are redirecting from. This MUST > be in or below the current folder.
> Also note that the .htaccess file can be created/edited with any plain > text editor, but you must ensure that the filename is [.htaccess] and > there is no filename extension like .txt stuck on the end. (Many > editors will default to that and you have to remove the ending if it > appears.)
> Before you invest too much time and effort in this, try it with just > ONE URL in case your hosting company does not allow you to > use .htaccess at all.
> If you cannot use the .htaccess at all, you could check out whether > you can use PHP to issue the 301.
> If you are limited to HTML with no server-side scripting language such > as PHP or ASP available to you, I have run out of ideas.
> Robbo
> On Aug 28, 10:39 am, carole wrote:
> > Recently went from page 1 to page nowhere after renaming my photo > > gallery pages to descriptive file names.
> > About 150/300 filenames were suddenly returning 404 after being > > deleted and replaced by new descriptive filenames. The spider can find > > that overnight. I recreated all 300 old filenames and used meta > > refresh on all 300 of the photo files. After several crawls it's > > still showing the old files as 404. It sure didn't find my redirects > > overnight.
> > I experimentally didn't redirect a few and used the URL removal tool > > for those. That worked just fine and quickly. But meta-refresh seems > > to be pretty useless so far. I used meta-refresh on most of them > > because I thought they might have backlinks that I want to keep.
> > Do I need also a noindex,nofollow on each of these old filename files > > to get the spider to see it? What a mess this is! There is no content > > at all in the old filename files, just the meta-refresh set to 0 and > > empty body. Is nofollow okay, or is the meta-refresh considered a link > > that should be followed? You see how crazy I am. I would offhand say > > no, that's not a link, but who knows?
> > I saw here that Phil said a simple meta-refresh won't cut it.
> > Please tell me what to do! This is a nightmare. I did much work to > > redo those gallery pages and upload that monster gallery on 56K, and > > now I have no ranking since August 4 because of it.
> (Obviously, you replace [myoldpage] and [mynewpage] with filenames > that you are using.
> Notice that after the [Redirect 301], you state only the filename (or > subfolder/filename) of the file you are redirecting from. This MUST > be in or below the current folder.
> Also note that the .htaccess file can be created/edited with any plain > text editor, but you must ensure that the filename is [.htaccess] and > there is no filename extension like .txt stuck on the end. (Many > editors will default to that and you have to remove the ending if it > appears.)
> Before you invest too much time and effort in this, try it with just > ONE URL in case your hosting company does not allow you to > use .htaccess at all.
> If you cannot use the .htaccess at all, you could check out whether > you can use PHP to issue the 301.
> If you are limited to HTML with no server-side scripting language such > as PHP or ASP available to you, I have run out of ideas.
> Robbo
> On Aug 28, 10:39 am, carole wrote:
> > Recently went from page 1 to page nowhere after renaming my photo > > gallery pages to descriptive file names.
> > About 150/300 filenames were suddenly returning 404 after being > > deleted and replaced by new descriptive filenames. The spider can find > > that overnight. I recreated all 300 old filenames and used meta > > refresh on all 300 of the photo files. After several crawls it's > > still showing the old files as 404. It sure didn't find my redirects > > overnight.
> > I experimentally didn't redirect a few and used the URL removal tool > > for those. That worked just fine and quickly. But meta-refresh seems > > to be pretty useless so far. I used meta-refresh on most of them > > because I thought they might have backlinks that I want to keep.
> > Do I need also a noindex,nofollow on each of these old filename files > > to get the spider to see it? What a mess this is! There is no content > > at all in the old filename files, just the meta-refresh set to 0 and > > empty body. Is nofollow okay, or is the meta-refresh considered a link > > that should be followed? You see how crazy I am. I would offhand say > > no, that's not a link, but who knows?
> > I saw here that Phil said a simple meta-refresh won't cut it.
> > Please tell me what to do! This is a nightmare. I did much work to > > redo those gallery pages and upload that monster gallery on 56K, and > > now I have no ranking since August 4 because of it.
> Recently went from page 1 to page nowhere after renaming my photo > gallery pages to descriptive file names.
> About 150/300 filenames were suddenly returning 404 after being > deleted and replaced by new descriptive filenames. The spider can find > that overnight. I recreated all 300 old filenames and used meta > refresh on all 300 of the photo files. After several crawls it's > still showing the old files as 404. It sure didn't find my redirects > overnight.
> I experimentally didn't redirect a few and used the URL removal tool > for those. That worked just fine and quickly. But meta-refresh seems > to be pretty useless so far. I used meta-refresh on most of them > because I thought they might have backlinks that I want to keep.
> Do I need also a noindex,nofollow on each of these old filename files > to get the spider to see it? What a mess this is! There is no content > at all in the old filename files, just the meta-refresh set to 0 and > empty body. Is nofollow okay, or is the meta-refresh considered a link > that should be followed? You see how crazy I am. I would offhand say > no, that's not a link, but who knows?
> I saw here that Phil said a simple meta-refresh won't cut it.
> Please tell me what to do! This is a nightmare. I did much work to > redo those gallery pages and upload that monster gallery on 56K, and > now I have no ranking since August 4 because of it.
Hi Craig, A 301 redirect is a redirect that appears with HTTP status response 301 in the server access log, so a suggestion would be to check in the server access log what is the HTTP status response for a specific request, for a specific URL and a specific user agent.
They won't appear like a 301 in the response, however, Google does TREAT them like one. I moved a domain about a year ago with zero time redirects and it worked, but it wasn't nearly as fast as a 301, over a month.
> Hi Craig, > A 301 redirect is a redirect that appears > with HTTP status response 301 > in the server access log, > so a suggestion would be to check in > the server access log what is > the HTTP status response for a specific > request, for a specific URL and a > specific user agent.
> Cristina.
> On Aug 28, 1:23 pm, cass-hacks wrote:
> > I've read both Sebastian and JohnMu saying that a 0 second redirect is > > taken the same as a 301, although I haven't tried it myself.
