legacy pages and google crawl

[scorpion]

If you have an extensive site and you do a new design of the pages such that all the links to the newly designed pages have different names, should you expect your old pages to drop out of google over time, even though they get clicks? Is there a way to ensure both your new pages and old pages still hang around in google?

[joshlim]

From what I think - if they're already in Google, they should stay. They'll only drop out if you delete the file itself, then Google will see that the file is no longer there, and drop it from the index.

[NickCoons]

scorpion,

From what I've read, Google will only index pages that have inbound links. If you rename a page, and remove the link to the old name, then it should drop out of the index on its own because you've removed the link to it (unless someone else links to it).

When I redesign and I have pages that Google has indexed, I create a file with the old name which is simply a redirect to the new page. So clicking on the old link in Google's index will take you to the new page, yet I don't have to worry about duplicate content because the old page will be dropped in the next indexing since there are no links to it (again, unless someone else links to it).

I try to discourage people from linking to pages on my site other than the home page.. and I do searches to verify that this is the case.

[cwebb]

And how exactly do you verify that? Search for each sub-page if they show backlinks? Or is there some better way to do this for quite a large website?

[NickCoons]

cwebb,

I search google for the two-word phrase that is the title of my site. People will generally use this text as the anchor text, or they will reference it, "This information was acquired from (my site name)."

Not a 100% accurate process, but by searching using Google's "link:" feature on my home page, I've so far not found a site that links to me that does not use the title somewhere.

[Robert Charlton]

It's best to use 301 permanent redirects rather than pages that meta-refresh or javascript redirect.

>>I try to discourage people from linking to pages on my site other than the home page..<<

Actually, it's often helpful to get people to link to internal pages. Inbound links can boost the ranking of a deep page. Otherwise, you're relying on PageRank filtering down from your home page.

I believe that deep links will also help you on other engines.

[Robert Charlton]

PS - Try the link.all:url command on Fast for what's usually the most complete list of backlinks you'll find.

[cwebb]

I was sort of hoping for a cool feature or program to do this, as I should check a 1000-page site for internal backlinks right now... *sigh*

[NickCoons]

Robert Charlton,

<<It's best to use 301 permanent redirects rather than pages that meta-refresh or javascript redirect.>>

This is how I setup my redirects.

<<Actually, it's often helpful to get people to link to internal pages. Inbound links can boost the ranking of a deep page. Otherwise, you're relying on PageRank filtering down from your home page.>>

That's true, though I prefer to focus the PR on the home page, and am not too interested in increasing the PR of the subpages. The content on my subpages is more effectively found with searches that are so specific that have only a few results, of which my pages are usually in the top ten. But the main page is more generic, and requires a higher PR to be found.. so I focus the PR there.

[NickCoons]

cwebb,

You could use an automated program to do this pretty easily, but I'm almost positive it's against Google's conditions of use, so I wouldn't recommend it.

And even so, using the "link:" search option, I think, only results in pages with PR5 or greater. Searching for likely anchor text (like my site's title) does not have this limit imposed on it.

[cwebb]

Of course I'd run this an AllTheWeb, but as the topic arised here I posted it under Google, please don't tell the mods hehe

thanks anyway for the suggestions!

[jeremy goodrich]

only results in pages with PR5 or greater.

It's PageRank 4 or greater backlinks that Google shows (at this time).

[NickCoons]

jeremy_goodrich,

<It's PageRank 4 or greater backlinks that Google shows (at this time).>

Ahh.. you're right. Previously, I've only seen PR5 sites there.. but am now noticing PR4 sites. Is this new, or simply the first time I'm seeing it?

[jeremy goodrich]

Could be the first you've seen it. :)

I've been seeing it that way for probably a year or so...try the site search [searchengineworld.com] any time you're not sure of something.

Odds are, it's been discussed at least once before.

[NickCoons]

jeremy_goodrich,

Thanks for the advice!