Updating Cached Web Data

[Snakle]

I have recently invested in a new web page development and have now released this web page onto the internet. The problem I have is that all the search engines have my old page cached and therefore when searching and then clicking on the result takes you to where the site used to be (which no longer exists). My question is how do I get all the seacrh engines to update their cache to reflect the new address.
I have written to the webmaster at all the main sites, Google, ASK, Yahoo, MSN asking them to replace their cached info with the new link. If you guys know of any other search engines please let me know or even better if you know of a way of updating the cached information that would be even better.

[Adria]

Writing to the webmaster at all those search engines is not going to do anything; they do not have some person updating individual links in their indexes. Remember, Google has over three billion documents!

You need to place a server code/redirect on the old site that informs all the search engines to go to the new location. You should have a redirect in place anyway, so that users can get from the old location to the new one.

It's very important that you use the right kind of redirect; you MUST use a 301 "Permanently Moved" redirect. A lot of people make the mistake of using a "302" code, which means "Temporarily Moved." If you do that, search engines will never get the message that your site has moved and will keep indexing the old URL.

Once you've got the appropriate redirect in place, you can either wait for the search engines to respider the site (remember, this is an automatic program, not a person), which can take a number of weeks. If you want to be sure, you should pay for inclusion at AskJeeves, FAST (Lycos), AltaVista, and Inktomi.