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Months ago, I changed all HTML files URL's of some site and builded a custom 404 to limit the damages. It's all the budget allowed us to do.
The cgi script keeps a separate log for all 404 calls. After the Google cycle, 92 % of errors still come from google images. The URL's or filenames of images did not change. But everytime some Google image visitor enlarge a tumbnail from the SERP, he sees the custom 404 page in the bottom frame.
I figured I loose about 35 % of visitors from google image since.
Any way to fix this on a shoestring budget?
Am I better to wait until Google updates the URL of pages?
Thanks for the reply.
Unfortunatly, the only thing we can afford in .htaccess is to redirect any 404 to a custom 404 page. There is too many pages involved for that site (+ 110.000).
Other factors weighted in. It was done in some panic from the client. We dont even know about older URL's...
Does anyone know if you can put a command in the .htaccess to transfer anything starting with images.google to a page that is designated? Maybe that would help. At least that way you aren't losing the user.
Site stucture was not OK but was left untouched (summer season market). Mostly filenames where changed.
Serious rebuild is considered for next fall.
I am reasonably sure you can also redirect based on URL pattern matching, so if there is some kind of rhyme or reason to the changes in the directory structure, it may be possible to use the rewrite engine to do the redirection - without specifying 110,000 separate rules.
