Newer Version Website

[precious]

We have just redesigned our website and are uploading it. The links of the webpages are different from the previous ones, i.e for eg. www.xyz.com/index.htm is now www.xyz.com/default.htm and so on.
If a visitor types www.xyz.com he will get the new site but if the visitor comes via search engines he might get an error because the links are different.

Therefore, is it okay have both versions online till the newer version is indexed, or should the older version be removed asap? Please advice on the course of action that should be taken.

Thanks.

[pageoneresults]

Hello precious, I'm sure you've been welcomed already but I'll do it again, welcome to Webmaster World. Just love the username, that's what I call my daughter at times, when she's precious! ;)

> Therefore, is it okay have both versions online till the newer version is indexed, or should the older version be removed asap?

Faced with a situation like that, I would remove the old version. Before doing so, I would set up a up a 301 redirect (Permanently Moved) which would redirect the spiders and visitors to the newly named pages. This way your existing PageRank (Google) will be passed on to the new pages. You'll have some work to do depending on how many pages there were that got renamed.

[gsx]

If you leave the newer version online, it will be respidered and reindexed (i.e. it will never be dropped - because it is there)

You need to put a meta tag Robots, content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" to stop the spiders from re-indexing.

Or, you can delete the files and use mod rewrite (Apache servers - if your host allows it) to have 'duplicate' filenames. Search this site for rewriterule for more information.

[precious]

Is it okay to leave it up for a couple of days till the final testing is done.

Suppose I remove it by Friday, will that do? It won't affect me in case google starts its dance, will it?

[precious]

Ok so I put in 301 redirect page - should this redirect page be for only the main domain or it should be done individually for all the pages that have a new address?

BTW - all the pages have a new address now.

[Knowles]

I would say for all of them, dont forget someone may have bookmarked the old page not just the index.

[pageoneresults]

> I would say for all of them, dont forget someone may have bookmarked the old page not just the index.

I concur with Knowles, you should have a 301 for each of the pages that have changed file names. Depending on how long the old site was up, there could be 100's of links, if not 1,000's that you need to take into consideration.

The only problem is with bookmarks. Those people won't know that the page name has changed. Neither will those linking to you unless their stats give them that information.