301s from .asp to .aspx

Default.asp?qString=Something to distinctPage.aspx

[emsaw]

Hi,

I have a site that was previously built using classic ASP where all content was served up from a dynamically generated default.asp page depending on a querystring variable. So, for example, default.asp?qString=birds would show content about birds, and default.asp?qString=dogs would show content about dogs.

I've now redeveloped this site using ASP.Net, and all pages are now up using distinct filenames, so now I have a physical page named birds.aspx or dogs.aspx.

The site was indexed by all of the search engines previously like:

[somesite.com...]
[somesite.com...]

So the server serves up the default server document, which now is default.aspx instead of default.asp .

I have created a default.asp page on the new server that simply does a 301 redirect after examining if the qString value is valid:

Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", redirectURL

Since the pages were indexed with [somesite.com...]

and since the new default document is an aspx page, I have also duplicated the 301 redirect in the default.aspx page as well, but I am not sure what this means to the search engines.

Since I had previously about 100 different pieces of information being displayed from one document based on the querystring variable, should I now be using the 301 essentially saying that default.aspx?qString=dogs has moved to dogs.aspx? isn't that like saying that default.aspx is not a valid page anymore? Or should I just let all of the [somesite.com...] links just drop off at the homepage and not do any kind of redirecting and just wait for the search engines to come by and realize that the site structure has changed on it's own? I'm confused.

ANY suggestions/thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[crobb305]

Anyone?

[mrMister]

You just need one default.aspx page that performs a 301 redirect to the appropriate .aspx pages depending on which querystring parameter is used.

[mrMister]

You just need one default.aspx page in your webroot that performs a 301 redirect to the appropriate .aspx pages depending on which querystring is used.

[emsaw]

mrMister,

Thanks for the reply. I am still a little unclear on one thing.

So the SE comes in through two old links:

[somedomain.com...]
[somedomain.com...]

in the page code, i 301 redirect to asdf.aspx and fdsa.aspx respectively.

Do you know if the SE sees index.aspx?Document=asdf and index.aspx?Document=fdsa as the 301 origination, or is it just index.aspx as the origination of the 301?

Seems to me that if it's the latter, that's a problem, no?

Any advice?

-Mark

[mattglet]

The originator will be index.aspx?Document=asdf

[emsaw]

mattglet,

thanks, that clears up a big question for me.
--Mark