Migrated from CFM to ASP.NET

Now all 15k pages indexed by the engines produce 404s

[avi wilensky]

My client's web development team migrated the site last week from CFM to ASP.NET.

Now all 15000 pages we have indexed in the engines produce 404 errors.

How long will it take for the engines to respider my site and reindex it?

Should I step up my link building to speed up the reindexing process?

What else should I do?

All help and advice appreciated. Never been through this before. Nerves are shaking like my heart is beating faster than a roller coaster!

[TheNige]

Do a search on 301 or 302 redirects. You can use a custom 404 page that will then redirect to your new page. If all you did was change the extensions of the pages then it will be easy...if not then you may need some way to map to what the new names of the pages are.

[Eltiti]

...of course, the *simple* way of doing this would be to specify that files with extension .cfm should be processed by C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_isapi.dll (which also processes files with extension .aspx). That way, you would have been able to *keep* the existing URLs. (I know, that doesn't help *you* anymore, but perhaps the idea is useful for others considering the same migration.)

[mattglet]

*simple* does not always equal correct.

[avi wilensky]

Thanks all for the advice. I've just lost ALL my top keywords that were enjoying nice positions on the SERPS. I'm very frustrated right now. How long will it take for Google & Yahoo to reindex all 15k pages?

[mrMister]

*simple* does not always equal correct.

However in this case, it is the correct (best) solution.

I gather by your post that you do not believe this. Would you care to explain why?

[mattglet]

I've gone over this argument before (can't find the post right now).

It's my opinion that this is a giant band-aid solution to the problem. The *correct* method (again, IMO) of converting your CFM links to ASPX is by doing 301 redirects, that's why the 301 was made: to provide a way to alert anything that checks the server header response a way to know that the link they are visiting has been permanently replaced by a new link.

In the end, there may not be anything WRONG with just having .NET process your CFM pages, but I don't believe it's RIGHT either. It just seems like a really half hearted attempt.

I'm willing to hear the other side of the story.

[mrMister]

Many people are having problems with redirects when it comes to search engines⁽¹⁾. If your primary concern is search engine rankings, then it would be wrong to choose them when there is another better solution.

On top of that, 301s produce an extra trip to the server, thus reducing page load time and increasing server load.

Most operating systems do not use file extentions to convey meta data for a file (In fact I thik CP/M, from which Windows is derived is the only one), even then IIS does not use that concept because HTTP itself doesn't use it. Therefore, it's completely unnecessary. In fact, Tim Berners-Lee specifically recommends that webmasters do not use file extentions (or at least file extentions that convey the programming language used which is the case with the .aspx extention)⁽²⁾. He also says URIs should not change.

the .aspx extention is completely arbitrary. If you're really wanting to convery the nature of the document with an extention then using .html for your ASP.Net generated HTML would be a much better choice.

Remapping the file extention is benign, it causes no disruption, it causes no extra overhead on the server, no extra maintainence or programming which is a lot more than can be said for using redirects.

⁽¹⁾ [webmasterworld.com...]
⁽²⁾ [w3.org...]

[BradleyT]

Well if your site was that large it was probably getting regularly spidered so it should get re-indexed fairly quickly.

[mrMister]

I assume that the original poster was more concerned about his ranking than just the site being indexed again.