Moving pages into root

but should I keep copies in existing folders

[jimmydubs]

I'm moving some of my core pages into root. The question is, should I keep copies in the old locations until the site has been re-indexed? Or is there a danger Google will penalise me for having duplicate pages?

Cheers

Jimmy

[Birdman]

I would use a 301 permanent redirect. Do you have an .htaccess file in your root?

<added>Sometimes .htaccess won't show up in your ftp program. Use your web-based file manager, if you have one. If you are on a M$ platform, you need to use your IIS manager to set up redirects. If youo can't do either of the above, use a meta-redirect

[jimmydubs]

Thanks Birdman. Sound complicated but I'll work it out in the end. In the meantime, will Google punish me if it sees the duplicate pages?

[Birdman]

>>>will Google punish me if it sees the duplicate pages?

It's possible!

Actually, doing the redirect is not that hard. Are you on a Microsoft server or a *nix server?

Also, do you have a control panel?

[bcc1234]

I don't think it's going to be a problem. At least not with google. From what I've seen - it crawls starting from the root and down the links, so the old pages will just be dropped from the index if there are no inboound links to them.

Leave it for a month so you don't lose any se referrals, but make sure nothing links to those pages.

[eclipx]

I've wondered about this myself and would like to know what others think about the following in the situation that there are links to a page that needs to be moved:

Could you not empty the file of content, place a ROBOTS meta tag "NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW" and then add a refresh or redirect meta tag pointing to the new page, along with a visible message indicating to the user that they are being redirected to the requested page.

Then try to have any links to the page corrected and once the log files show no request for the moved page over certain amount of time, remove said file.

Could you accomplish this using 301 on IIS 5?

[jimmydubs]

This is all great stuff. Thanks everyone.