page name change killed me

recently changed page name

[brancook]

I have recently changed the names of one on my pages. The page name originally had nothing to do with the topic of the page. So I changed it to the topic, set up my 301 redirects on the server. I checked the page rank of the new page and it was zero. The old page had a pr of 4. Is there anything I can do to fix this? The page has been changed for a few months now. Or is it something I shouldn't even worry about?

[bill]

PR is totally unreliable and rarely updated. You're just seeing an estimate. Don't sweat it. ;)

[Robert Charlton]

brancook - I've had new or changed pages not show PR for a while, but actually rank very well.

I'd use the site: operator to make sure the page is in the index, and maybe search an exact unique word string on the page (put say 5 or 6 words in quotes) to make sure the page is indexed. If it is, you're fine.

[brancook]

I really worried at first but after doing some research I found that my redirects seemed to work transferring all inbound links from the old page to the new one. Also after doing a google search on the keyword I'm after I noticed that the number 2 ranking site had a PR of 2.

After that I decided to not that much attention to PR anymore.

Thanks

[Terabytes]

by changing the name of a page...
are you not "in essence" creating a brand new page?

...so any past PR on the old page would not transfer to the brand new page...it's no longer the old page...it's on its own...correct?

and has to build itself up again...

it's the same as deleting an old internal page and linking to a different internal page....

IMO - changing a page name, unless you really, really need to, destroys any rank built up for it in the past...because essentially it IS a new page...

(just my $.02)
Thanks!

[Marcia]

It's a new URL, but returning a 301 header status code from the previous page means that the page has moved. So the old page has moved to the new, it isn't the same as a brand new page from scratch.

[Terabytes]

yep....my fault...missed the 301 part...
sorry...

[g1smd]

It can take many months for the PR to be transferred as seen by the Toolbar rating.

[bridge98]

There is good page with information about url names, search for "Cool URIs don't change".

[Robert Charlton]

brancook - This should go without saying, but just in case you haven't... double-check that you've changed all the links on your site to the new url.

If the page has any deep links from other sites, you might try to get several of those changed as well.

[hylee]

hmm, I guess changing a file name wouldn't be a wise thing to do.. what about changing title and snippet? would it be the same?

[Quadrille]

Depends what you mean by snippet, but not so bad.

<TITLE> is an important factor, most would say - but it is one of many, so Google will know it's the same page. Likely effect is a drop in ranking on searches including elements of the old title, and eventually, a possible increase in searches relating to the new.

If the 'new' title is more appropriate to the content, probably worth doing; the visitors you lose would have been less likely to do business that the ones you attract. But that's a pretty big generalization :)

[Robert Charlton]

brancook - What do you mean by changing the "snippet"? Are you talking about changing the meta description?

Also, what kind of changes are you thinking about with regard to the title? They could help you or hurt you, depending on what you do.

[brancook]

I didn't bring up 'snippet', so I'm not sure what that means either.

I believe I'm doing more harm by not trying to make changes. Our site doesn't do very well with web traffic. I've taken the site over from someone else, and this other person has really tried to spam our way to the top of the search engines. Using a lot of bad linking strategies and text the same color as the background ect...

[Robert Charlton]

I believe I'm doing more harm by not trying to make changes. Our site doesn't do very well with web traffic.

If your site isn't getting good traffic, by all means make changes then...

Decide on good target phrases (attainable phrases, related to your page, that people actually search)... and make title and page content changes to go after them. Also, consider nav links and inbound links. Make your content worth linking to.

Changing page file names is low down on my list of changes that will help things, though, and... assuming crawler-friendly file names... I'd focus on content and linking before considering renaming the files.

[brancook]

The reason why my first thought was to start changing page names was because they were named so badly. The current page names at this point have nothing to do with the actual content on the page.

[Matt Probert]

The reason why my first thought was to start changing page names was because they were named so badly.

Ask yourself. Will this benefit my users/readers/customers?

Matt

[brancook]

The only way renaming a page will benefit the customer is by having them find it. And that's my goal.