.html to .php lost google traffic

[landlord411]

I just started working with a new company and their SEO. Apparently a few months ago they switched from an html structure to a php structure and since around that time their google traffic fell.

Are PHP files less likely to get recognized as html? If this post is in the wrong section I am sorry.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[PatrickDeese]

well - the problem is that if your site had a page called widgets.html and they changed it to widgets.php - your site is now serving 404s for any search engine / link referrals to widgets.html.

If you have a large site it might take many months for the Search engines to reindex the new pages of your site.

[VegasRook]

A better policy would have been to alter the server's treatment of .html pages to treat them as .php pages. That way you have no url changes and .html works just like .php.

I think .php gets discounted. At least it used to. I would love to hear some current information on this as well.

[ogletree]

They are fine the problem is that switching file names is like starting over again. Some people believe that .php and .asp files are treated a little different than .html files. I can't prove it but I just try to keep every thing .html if I can. You can alwasy run a .html as a .asp or .php file.

[landlord411]

Thanks for all your insight. I am told the traffic died about 6 months ago. Unfortuantely I don't have access to traffic reports past September, but I can see that sales are way down from February.

Anyone else have suggestions?

[PatrickDeese]

> Anyone else have suggestions?

Have you tried pay per click?

[landlord411]

Yes we are running pay per click but it would be great to get the organic traffic coming in stronger.

[ogletree]

Just changing URL's should not put you out for 6 months. Something else is wrong. Unless all your backlinks were to the file names that were changed.

[freeflight2]

are your old pages still in the serps? mod_rewrite can do wonders or you might just change the endings to .html again and assign that to mod_php

[landlord411]

These are great suggestions, I appreciate it. Now that I think about the time the that php went to html I remember them telling me that they switched hosting too.

Could this perhaps lead to a major drop in google?

Thanks for the input.