Hullo, Till,
In the eyes of a search engine spider, it may be impossible to tell
the difference between a legitimate "change" of suffix to .shtml, and
a doorway or cloaked page. It's recommended to use a 10 second delay
on the META refresh, with advertisement of the new URL as a "we're
moving" and a clear text link pointing to the new page, to avoid any
possible suggestion of impropriety. The Webmaster Quality Guidelines
specify "Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects." The META refresh
has become associated with sneaky redirects, therefore, it's best not
to use it, even if your intentions are pure.
There -is- a "legal" way to avoid the problem. From the Webmaster Guidelines:
" ... there are steps you can take to make sure your transition is a
smooth one. Google listings are based in part on our ability to find
you from links on other sites. To preserve your rank, you will want to
inform others who link to you of your change of address. One way to
find out who is linking to you is to try a link search. Enter
"link:[your full URL]" into the Google search box. You may not find
every page that links to you with this method, but it should help you
begin redirecting the links leading to your site. (Please note: we do
not serve link queries for all of the sites in our index, so this may
not produce any results for your site.) Once your new site is live,
you may wish to place a permanent redirect (using a "301" code in HTTP
headers) on your old site to inform visitors and search engines that
your site has moved."
Create a 301 HTTP Header
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Assuming a ?NIX box, use the .htaccess file to create a 301 redirect.
If you already have an .htaccess file, simply append the redirects. If
not, you can create it as a textfile in Notepad. Don't forget the . at
the beginning. There is no extension on the filename .htaccess is all
and everything.
One or two redirects can be handled with a straight 301 command, e.g.:
Redirect 301 index.html http://www.yourdomain.com/index.shtml
In individual redirects, always specify the full URL in the "to"
portion of the Apache statement.
If you're doing over all your pages, you might wish to use the
RedirectMatch command, e.g.:
RedirectMatch 301 (.*)\html$ http://www.yourdomain.com$1.shtml
Further Reading
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Redirect Methods
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=5644
.htaccess Tutorial
http://www.hostpronto.com/article/9/3
An Introduction to Redirecting URLs on an Apache Server
(May require free registration)
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum92/82.htm
I hope this helps, Till. Please feel free to ask if you need any clarification.
larre
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