renaming php files to htm

Will google care?

[mbstruss]

I changed all the file extensions on my site and gave them an htm extension. Seems like I read somewhere that renaming files might effect your site with google somehow. Is there anything that I need to do to tell google in this regards? Thanks for any help--

[ciml]

I would probably want to leave pages at the PHP URLs, with the content removed and links to the htm URLs. The main thing I'd want to avoid is Google having the same content on both sets of URLs. Keep in mind that it can be a while before Google recrawls, especially if the link to them has been removed.

I see suplpemental results in Google that were last crawled in February 2004 - it's no wonder they have such a big index.

Another option would be to use 301 status HTTP redirects - but Google sometimes does strange things with redirects so I would probably avoid that if I could.

[mbstruss]

Thanks for your helpful reply. I have a few more questions..
1) Does changing the extensions type only cause a problem until google re-indexes the site - or does it somehow prevent the re-indexing?
2) What type of redirects should I use within the php files (headers, meta, or javascript)?
3) Also, if I was to use duplicate phps as just pointers to the new htms, should I then keep these php pointers indefinately?

[ciml]

I understand that looking inside your server you would be changing the extensions, but in terms of HTTP (i.e. the rest of the world) they're just different URLs.

So you want Google to drop the old URLs, and crawl the new URLs.

One common problem is that if you remove all the old URLs at once, some of them are no longer linked to. This can cause Google to keep them for a long time as supplemental results.

> 2) What type of redirects should I use within the php files (headers, meta, or javascript)?

If you were going to use redirects, 301 status HTTP redirects would be best. If your PHP is on Apache then you'd probably find mod_rewrite easiest, otherwise you would be looking for the relevant PHP [webmasterworld.com] code to set the HTTP headers.

Personally, I would just upload replacement PHP files with links to the new URLs.

> Also, if I was to use duplicate phps as just pointers to the new htms, should I then keep these php pointers indefinately?

I would expect that you would only need to keep them until Google has removed the duplicate content. Of course you might also want to think about links from other sites - and bookmarks.

[ogletree]

No never ever change file name that are in Google. That is always a bad idea. Extentions mean nothing to Google. It will set you way back like starting over. Even if there was a benefit to doing it the penalty of chainging file names is so much worse. It will take you a while to recover. If you are in Yahoo it will take a very very long time.

[ciml]

Yep and as we should all know, Cool URIs don't change [w3.org].

[Trax]

good link ciml!