Changed from .html to .asp - home page no longer indexed

[The Cornishman]

Hi everyone,

Perhaps someone more experienced than I can help resolve this issue.

I have been running a small site for a few years consisting entirely of html files, and have been happy enough with the search engine ranking on Google.

Recently, having learnt some new skills, I created a new version of the site, with all files now set up as asp files. In particular my home page which used to be called index.html is now called index.asp.

To my horror, I have discovered that although all pages other than my home page are indexed by Google, my home page definitely is not. Given that this is the page that all of my 'useful' external links point to, this is quite bad news... Effectively my site no longer appears on Google at all.

Does anyone know what the problem is? I have searched around a little, and some say that when using asp files the home page should be called 'default.asp' rather than 'index.asp'. Is the solution as simple as that, or is there some other problem?

Just to mention also - the site is being indexed OK on Yahoo.

Thank you all in anticipation.

[Wlauzon]

Does the page show up when you go to the site URL *without* typing in the page name?

If so it is probably as simple as changing your .htaccess to show that as the home page default.

And yes, with asp or asp.net systems the home page should be named "default" unless you modify the htaccess.

Otherwise... I dunno.

[edited by: Wlauzon at 10:36 pm (utc) on Jan. 20, 2009]

[g1smd]

You should never include the index file name in links pointing to index pages.

End the URL in the link with a trailing slash, and that URL will work whatever the index pages are actually called.

The user never needs to know what they called. Omit the name from the link.

That way, when you change the technology that runs your site, the URL that users use to access the content does not change, even if the actual file name of the file on the server *has* changed.

[PitbullNPythons]

If you're running IIS you could just do a 301 from index.html page to index.asp. Realistically that's what you should have done when migrating to active server pages from html. Every html page should have been 301'd to the new asp version.

Now that G has dropped index.html it may be too late though.

[g1smd]

*** If you're running IIS you could just do a 301 from index.html page to index.asp. ***

That just prolongs the pain.

Redirect

(index¦default¦home)\.(html?¦php[345]?¦[aj]spx?¦cfm)

to strip the filename off, and be done with it.

Don't use any index file filename in the URL when you link to the root of a site, or to a folder. End the URL with a trailing slash.