Duplicate pages

- How will the SE react?

[jkruit]

I have a site that was redone. Because I was new, I didn't know that I should keep the exact file names that the site had before. So I made new files and loaded them and the search engines picked them up. But now I see, periodically, a link to one of the old files. Of course, when someone links on it, they get an error. So I have been reviving those old file names. How can I keep from stepping on the toes of the SE and getting penalized for duplicate pages and also, give the public access to the page they have chosen? I put a meta tag in the file asking the search engine not to index it but I read somewhere that all SE don't read the tags?

Thanks
Janine

[Brett_Tabke]

Ya, all the bigger se's will read a robots/no index tag.

However, why would you want to lose those pages? Put up some fresh content where the old urls were. There is still value in it. People's bookmarks and inbound links. I'd think you'd want to keep those old urls there!?

[jkruit]

Great idea...THANKS!!!!!

Janine

[nonprof webguy]

jkruit:

I faced a similar issue recently when our site was completely redesigned. There was no way we wanted to keep the old file structure, yet there were thousands of linkers and SEs with links to our old pages (and some SEs still have those old pages -- 5 months after our relaunch). I didn't want to clutter my site with 'ghost pages,' either.

So I put some server-side script in my default error page that checks the query string against a list of the URLs of our old pages and, redirects the user to the new version of that page (if there is one), else it just loads the error page.

I use .asp -- Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING") is the way you get the query string -- but there are probably other server-side scripting tricks that could do this.

[engine]

Always several ways to deal with this.
Even if you put up a simple page, be quick about putting up something - the robots will return a number of times, but, if they keep finding 404s they will assume the pages are gone forever and remove them from their index.

[jkruit]

Thanks for the suggestions...I only had about 15 pages and I spent the day yesterday and today putting new copy into them. With my limited experience of making a web, this was the best way for me to deal with this and also, I got to save my good position in the Search Engine.

Thanks again everyone
Janine