moving pages to root will PR change?

[asamm]

We are planing to move our site from Apache to an IIS6 server. In the old server our site was placed in a directory called /mydir. To reach our site you had to type www.oursite.com/mydir/index.php

We have changed that so on the server it will appear as www.mysite.com/index.php

we currently have a low PR3 on some pages it is PR4. And we don't do well on any of our keywords. In fact we are not appearing on any SERP pages at all. only a few keyword appear on page 2,3 or 4.

the site is an commerce, I just started on this project and there are a lot of demands that I should do it the right way. The site have been live for about a year, but it does not get any organic traffic from SEs.

My question is:

how much do we loose if we just move without using the /mydir?

Or do I have to use some url rewriter tool to change our url?

I have been reading this forum for the past two months and have learned some good stuff which I am going to implement on this project, but still I would appreciate your more advice.

[Marcia]

Apache is very straightforward, IIS isn't near as simple for rewriting URLs. But I guess you have no choice in the matter. :(

PR is related to linking structure and number of clicks away for PR propogation, and with a change like you're mentioning it could take a few months to catch up. But what you want is not index.php - rather www.example.com/ or example.com/

[asamm]

Thanks Marcia,

If I understood you (sorry english is not my first language), I should keep the sturcture? and use some rewrite tool?

[londrum]

you can change the structure if you want. if you use a proper rewrite, then everything will appear to the search engines exactly as it was in the first place -- so there will be no harm done.

but if you don't use a rewrite, then the search engines will think that all of your pages are brand new. and none of the credit that you were getting from external links will be passed onto the new urls. so will you definitely see a drop in your ranking.

...i would definitely set up a rewrite

[lavazza]

Cool URIs don't change [w3.org]

What makes a cool URI?
A cool URI is one which does not change.
What sorts of URI change?
URIs don't change: people change them.

There are no reasons at all in theory for people to change URIs (or stop maintaining documents), but millions of reasons in practice...