Unpredictable habits of search engines!

[TraceyHand]

Why are search engines so unpredictable?

I had 2 websites last year. One (Chariots On Hire, now deceased due to oer-work..LOL) was really well indexed by Google and nowhere to be seen on MSN.

The other, Budget Bumps, was average on Google but, since redesign and relaunch, comes up quite well (on Google anyway)

I used my redundant COH software to build our 3rd website, Jesters Trick Bits.

Now, granted it still quite new (3-4 months perhaps) but JTB seems to have a reversed presence! (COH was, until quite recently, still showing on Google)

JTB comes up really well in MSN and is practically invisible on Google!!

I'd got it into my head that Actinic was just generally well picked up by Google but now I'm wondering what on earth I must have done in the change-over from COH to JTB that has made it drop off the map and onto MSNs radar!!

Fickle things, these search engines!!

[Mike Hughes]

Google still has lots of your old pages indexed (that now give a 404 error) but hasn't picked up many of the new pages yet.

If I were you I'd create a .htaccess file that does a permanent redirect from the old filenames to the new pages. That way Google won't think your website is full of holes and customers will find the pages they need.

Mike

[pinbrook]

Tracey, You can do the redirects that Mike suggests via your control panel.

find the "redirect URL" icon, then you are can list the old URLs and do a permanent redirect to the new URLs. Or simply redirect all traffic from COH to BB

[Mike Hughes]

Just to be clear on what I'm saying.

the Jester Trick bits site has lots of old .asp pages in Google that I assume are from the old shopping cart. It's these that need to be redirected to the equivalent actinic pages.

Mike

[TraceyHand]

thanks Mike you've reminded me
I do need to set up an .htaccess for JTB, I'd forgotten!
(adds to to-do list for tomorrow!)
Cheers!

[pinbrook]

Rather than create the htaccess file, you can do this on your hosting control panel.

Just a matter of choice whether you want to do it yourself or use a gui to to it for you