Moving a page, what should I put on the old page?

[TerryMc]

I know people talk about 301 redirects, but does someone have a "google friendly" example of exactly what I should put some pages that I am moving to a different location on my site?

I'm moving some pages from [example.com...]

to [example.com...]

So what should I put on old file at [example.com...]
to make it a google friendly redirect? Its going to be the exact same file, but in a different location.

[edited by: Marcia at 2:10 am (utc) on Jan. 19, 2004]
[edit reason] Changed to example.com [/edit]

[g1smd]

You can either:

Do a 301 redirect such that when the browser asks for /folder/page the server redirects the browser to /page instead. If you do a redirect, there will be no content at the old page location.

OR

You can leave the old page up but add a link to the new page on it, and then add the <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow"> meta tag to the old page too. This will tell Google to delist the old page, and relist the new page in its place. Allow about 4 to 6 weeks for this to take effect.

.

Whichever method you use, you will also need to do a search for incoming links from external pages, contact the site owners, and ask them to amend their link to point to your new page.

There are at least 4 or 5 active threads on this topic in the last 4 weeks alone.

[Haecceity]

I recently moved some pages and put the following sort of thing in the header on the old pages:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="2;URL=http://www.domain.org/resources/page.html">

It's also good to put a static link and a nice little message in case anyone has meta refresh disabled.

Is this Google friendly?

[Marcia]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld.

>>Is this Google friendly?

Nope, meta direct isn't a good idea where search engines are concerned, particularly a fast one. Best use 301, that's the safest and most efficient all around.

For pages or sites that don't have the capability of using a 301 make sure and do not leave the same content on the old page that will go on the new, and put on a link to the new page so that search engines can follow it.

If meta refresh has to be used because there's no alternative it should be a slow one with nothing on the old page but a small message about the page (or site) having been moved. I've heard some people say they've been OK with 15 seconds.

The best way is 301 if possible.

[TerryMc]

Thanks for the tips. I found this and used it and it seems to work:

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: [domain.com...]
exit();

I decided on this way because I had numerous files, that have moved and I didn't want to adjust the .htaccess file for the remaining files that are in the old directory that are not moving.

[Haecceity]

Thanks Marcia, and thanks especially TerryMC since my next question was going to be how to do a 301.

[g1smd]

If you do it the meta refresh way then you MUST also have a normal HTML link for bots to follow, AND you MUST use the meta robots noindex tag to tell Google to delist the page.

A message for humans to read is also a good iddea.

[bull]

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");

Why HTTP/1.1? Googlebot uses 1.0