535,000 urls not found! HELP!

[rackjite]

Hi, new here but I need some help with the 301 code...

A few months ago I moved a 9000 article DB from one blog software program to Word Press and made some mistakes in the transition. To say the least! I was told by some SEO types to use %postname% only, which I did. I am now told to not change it again or it will make matters worse.

Almost all my google search results have gone from front pages to NO PAGES. Traffic down from 3000pv a day to about 800, Adsense following suit. Still have my PR5 though, but I am worried.

I now have 535,000 URLs not found in Webmaster tools.
They seem to grow by many thousands a day.
It seems the most grievous are the archives.
Here is one that is NOT FOUND:

http://example.com/archives/9698-Supreme-Court-Super-PAC-music-video.html

I put that in the url box and make it this and it works.

http://example.com/Supreme-Court-Super-PAC-music-video/

This is the 301 someone made for me to correct this.

RewriteRule ^archives/([0-9]+)\-(.*).html$ http://example.com/$2 [NC,L,R=301]

It doesn't seem to work.

And is there anyway to MARK AS FIXED half a million of these things so I can see if they are old or keep happening...

Thanx
Rack

[edited by: incrediBILL at 12:05 am (utc) on Jul 14, 2012]
[edit reason] fixed URLS, use Example.com [/edit]

[lucy24]

And is there anyway to MARK AS FIXED half a million of these things so I can see if they are old or keep happening...

:: grabbing the easy part ::

At the top of google's list there is an extra checkbox that doesn't belong to an individual name. Click that one and the whole list will be selected.

You don't need to escape literal hyphens except possibly in grouping brackets-- and then there's always an escape-less alternative.

General rule for blogs: You can't just jump in and start redirecting, because there's a very good chance the software already includes some built-in rewrites. So you need to work with what's already there and make sure you are not going around in circles-- or redirecting things that will never reach your rule because they have already been rewritten.

We do not need to see your entire htaccess, but there is definitely more than one line involved. Start by studying what's there and figuring out what's what. Pre-packaged htaccess files do tend to include thorough annotation. That can be a big help.

[g1smd]

In the code example, do NOT escape the hyphen and DO escape the literal period.

Lax coding creates duplicates.

Additionally, the (.*) bit should be changed to be a more "specific" pattern.

[rackjite]

I cant really make heads or tails of rewrite code. What is meant by prepackaged htaccess files? I was hoping someone would give the actual code for my specific issue. I can only FIXED 500 at a time, I need to do 500 THOUSAND at a time! And tools only gives 1000 of the 500,000.
What a mess...
But thanx