Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
The current Google results seem to be split 50/50 between Pagename.htm and pagename.htm. My questions are:
1) is such a sudden/widespread 301 fix dangerous to the overall ranking of the site?
2) how does Google deal with indexing 301 redirects -- does it drop the old page and add the new page at the same time or does it first drop the old page then add the new page at a later date?
3) any experience with how long it takes for Google to completely sort out site-wide canonical fixes?
1) is such a sudden/widespread 301 fix dangerous to the overall ranking of the site?
Unknown with the limited information available. You could lose rankings, but it's hard to quantify that loss above and beyond the losses you've already seen. That said if I understand your situation correctly I would think that you shouldn't lose rankings that you now have (after your initial loss), but YMMV.
2) how does Google deal with indexing 301 redirects -- does it drop the old page and add the new page at the same time or does it first drop the old page then add the new page at a later date?
I've (personally) seen both depending on the importance of the page. Top level pages seem to change immediately. Lower level pages can be dropped for a period before their new versions come back.
3) any experience with how long it takes for Google to completely sort out site-wide canonical fixes?
IMHO, 3 years ago it was faster than it is now. These days it can be 4-6 months for a full recovery if you're doing sitewide type URL changes, but since you're just redirecting half your pages and not changing half it could be less.
One datapoint that would be interesting is the amount of external links that link to the lowercase versions vs. the capital versions. If they're mostly linking to the correct version, you will see faster recovery. If they're mostly linking to the wrong version, recovery will be much more slow.
Google then hits the old urls, processes the 301, then updates the SERP's a bit quicker than if you waited for Google to crawl the entire website.
Then the old urls are removed from the XML file.
One follow-up question... I noticed some links where a folder name has different capitalizations (/Folder/page.htm vs. /folder/page.htm). Google has not flagged these for dup. content, nor has it indexed both versions. Do I need to 301 these discrepancies as well or does Google not factor folder capitalization in making URL distinctions?
Do I need to 301 these discrepancies as well or does Google not factor folder capitalization in making URL distinctions?
They're technically different URLs, so it's best not to serve the same content on both versions.
Are the links internal or external? If they're internal and the folders haven't been indexed (as verified by putting the incorrect version of the URL in Google and making sure it returns "results not found") then I don't see a problem with correcting them and making sure the incorrect version returns a 404.
If they're external links pointing in, or the incorrect folder case is in fact indexed, I would correct it with a 301.
Are the links internal or external?
They're both. Problem is, I use Windows servers, which don't return a 404 for miscapitalized URLs. /folder/page.htm returns the same thing as /FoLDEr/PAge.Htm. A fix at the server to return a 404 would be fantastic, to catch any miscapitalizations I miss with my redirects.
A fix at the server to return a 404 would be fantastic, to catch any miscapitalizations I miss with my redirects.
Since you already have external links pointing into the incorrect versions, I'd strongly recommend 301s.
We do it locally with asp.net for other reasons, but a quick way to get started is with ISAPI rewrite. Get a copy of it installed.
Once you do that, have a look at jdMorgan's awesome Canonicalization Guide [webmasterworld.com]. Almost everything designed for mod_rewrite will work with ISAPI rewrite. You will find solid examples of code in there should solve the majority, if not all, of your issues.
