Preserving Google Juice when changing URLs for G News

[anand84]

On my website, all links are of the SEO friendly form, www.example.com/green-widgets-online. Now, I am in the process of submitting my website to Google News, which requires that I have to compulsorily have a number on my URL structure for my website to be accepted.

I have devised a way by which all my URLs would now look like www.example.com/green-widgets-online/?p=12344

Now, I suppose Google News would not have a problem. But my question is will this in any way affect all my web pages till now, which till date were at www.example.com/postname and now will have an extra "?p=" in the end.

Also, will websites that have linked to my earlier URL structure still pass on juice to the new URL structure with an extra "?p=" at the end?

Thanks

[alika]

Isn't the 3-digit rule now waived if you submit a Google News sitemap per their Technical Requirements: Article URLs page?

We were accepted long ago when the 3 digit was the requirement. Not sure how it is now, and whether you can indeed apply even without the 3 digits in your URL

I would love to hear the experiences of others who have dropped the 3 digit URL rule as long as you submit the sitemap. Does it really work or not? I've heard conflicting stories

[anand84]

Yes, I've heard about that too. The information is given here : [google.com...]

However, I find it too technical and thought the 3 digit alternate was much simpler(for a non-techie like me) to implement, provided SEO is taken care of.

[anand84]

I'm still waiting for a response. Any advice will be really great.

Thanks

[FranticFish]

will this in any way affect all my web pages till now, which till date were at www.example.com/postname and now will have an extra "?p=" in the end.

yes

will websites that have linked to my earlier URL structure still pass on juice to the new URL structure with an extra "?p=" at the end?

no

These are new urls. You are going to have to force a 301 redirect from one to the other.

If your articles are db driven then when the article template page is requested you can use PHP (and ASP too I imagine) to check for the unique identifier for the article (either the postname or hopefully a backend id number) then do a db lookup and a 301 to the new url. This will avoid traffic loss and will transfer over link benefit. I've read that you can take a temporary rankings hit in the process but I've not seen this myself the (admittedly few) times I've done it.