Test of old Forum SERP's

AngelaCea said: "I thought I would run a test on some keywords important to all members here at WebMastery, we have a very famous trio of members here so I decided to run a search on our famed 3 and see what happens when SERP's come up from the old forum and wanted to share it with you all. Feel free to run your own tests with different keywords and post the URL's :) Check this one out and see where it leads, to the old forum or new. [url]http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Three+Stooges%2C+Edwin%2C+Darksat%2C+Oneill&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8[/url] Remember, I think BK should put a headline link on all the old forum threads to lead members to the new forum, I don't care how he does it, he needs to tie the two forums together somehow if the old threads can not be uploaded to this database."

Darksat said: "Just stick up a few links somewhere and G will find them. [url]http://archives.web-mastery.net/[/url] [url]http://archives.web-mastery.net/forums.html[/url]"

quinny said: "who is G :confused:"

Darksat said: "Google. :cool:"

AngelaCea said: "I guess none of you are understanding. When someone searches and WM comes up in the search they are not going to find the thread that came up in the search but will only find BK's redirection link to the new forum. What should happen is this, they should be taken to the new forum and be given a link to the old thread, or should be taken to the old forum with a link at the end of the thread to the new forum. Or he should import the old data base into the new forum because it is the best option and will fuel the growth of the new forum without all of these redirection problems and folks not being able to find the forum from the SERP's. Should I explain again or are you all beginning to understand?"

quinny said: "i hear you"

Darksat said: "Now I understand what you are saying however google is going to update its links to the archive before long when it spiders around next time and it wont do someone a lot of good if they post in the old forum. if they really want the info that google found they can use the cache or ask here. this will help populate the new forum."

Darren said: "I'm 404'ing all the old traffic. They can click on a link and be brought here. The whole old site will be spidered at [url="http://archives.web-mastery.net"]http://archives.web-mastery.net[/url] and this one will be spidered very quickly. Have no fear, AnthonyCea, you might be amazed at how fast I can drive traffic back here!"

Darksat said: "Is your 404 delivering a 404 header response? a 301 header response for your 404 page might be better. Edit. Ive just checked with this [url]http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php[/url] your delivering a 302 redirect header response, apparently google isnt to keen on them."

Darren said: "I did a custom 404, which in essence delivers a 200 (OK) response. I'm not attempting to re-direct any of the traffic. IMHO, it will be trivial for Google to recognize the new site structure. I'm not attempting to retain PR or any of that. I really want Google to remove all the old pages it has."

Darksat said: "How long do you anticipate this will take and do you think the archive will retain similar serps positioning for threads as the old forum."

edwin said: "i think it will take them a while to drop the old pages. i bet this takes a months or so, i think the old pages on a new domain should rank the same. it will be interesting to find out."

Darksat said: "[QUOTE=edwin] i think the old pages on a new domain should rank the same. it will be interesting to find out.[/QUOTE] Yeah thats what im mainly wondering about, those sections will probably have less PR now but will that make a difference as they had SFA anyway. Also the content wont be as dynamic any more. Thats one I would like to watch."

Darren said: "This is definietly an experiment, but I think it will be quick. The forums I rewrote to the old names, so they have PageRank. The spidering of the new pages shouldn't take too long. The main thing I want to see is how long it takes for the dynamic pages to be removed from the index. I assume when the archive gets spidered it will rank the same way. We'll see. I'm having a hard time locking it down even because it is so buggy."

Heather said: "I saw it will take around 6 weeks. We'll see what happens :)"

AngelaCea said: "No way in hell it can be good to lose all those keywords in the old threads and the SERP's that exist in the index. It is a grave error, I will tell you that."

Darren said: "Are you serious? When the threads get re-indexed they'll go right back in Google. Google is not as mysterious as you think it is, Anthony. It's actually pretty unsophisticated. Why do you think spammers rule the SERPS?"

AngelaCea said: "So lets get down to it here, how do you expect to benefit from the threads in the old forum if someone clicks on them and gets a redirection page instead of the thread? Are you saying that when the pages are spidered again they will index them with the new URL's for the old forum and they will see the old threads? I think you would have been better off to rename the new forum with a new URL, left the old forum be, lock all the threads, place a banner link on each page directing each reader to the new forum. That is the way I would have done it. Just ask DarkSat how smart I am, don't ask Edwin, he is not smart enough to see any genius. Edwin thinks genius is when he looks at in the mirror :p :p :p"

Heather said: "I'm sure that the bugs will be getting worked out. This is a lot better software. I think."

quinny said: "[QUOTE=AnthonyCea] Are you saying that when the pages are spidered again they will index them with the new URL's for the old forum and they will see the old threads?[/QUOTE] i would think yes"

Darren said: "Had the situation been different, I might have done it that way, Anthony. However, I have 50,000 pages in Google that are URL only and I really want to clean them up. There will be no problem, Google already crawled the new site structure today."

AngelaCea said: "[QUOTE=web-mastery]Had the situation been different, I might have done it that way, Anthony. However, I have 50,000 pages in Google that are URL only and I really want to clean them up. There will be no problem, Google already crawled the new site structure today.[/QUOTE] OK, but many can not understand the above, explain it in terms that a newbie can understand for the forum. Explain in detail each statement BK so we can put this to bed."

Darren said: "I have and I shall continue too. I'm documenting my adventure for all."

Darren said: "[QUOTE=Darksat]Is your 404 delivering a 404 header response? a 301 header response for your 404 page might be better. Edit. Ive just checked with this [url="http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php"]http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php[/url] your delivering a 302 redirect header response, apparently google isnt to keen on them.[/QUOTE] I found out why this happens. If you use an http:// in the .htaccess file, it thinks the pages is external and does a redirect. If you make the command a relative filename, it does it correctly and issues the 404. Without this, the pages would remain stuck in Google forever. Here is the correct code for 404 in your .htaccess [CODE] ErrorDocument 404 /404.html [/CODE] The 404.html can be any valid HTML document you want. Here's a second tool to [url=http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp]Check Headers[/url] All appears well now so GoogleBot should start figuring out things very soon."