Hi Jennifer;
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I have a question. We have just revamped our site to modernize it and make it more effective Before it was html and now it is php. Does that mean it is treated as a new site by the search engines. Your comments about antiquity of a site made me wonder.
I hope this is right forum for
this question.
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Any forum is good. It's the viagra ads and blatant ads that make me go cross eyed. Real questions are welcome most anywhere! lol
You ask a very good question. Google's latest "big daddy" update was launced because of that very type issue. See, most search engines are not able to distinguish different urls to the same content.
(this is called canonicalization issues in the SEO world)
For example, they would see:
lindacaroll.com
www.lindacaroll.com
lindacaroll.com/index.html
www.lindacaroll.com/index.html
as being 4 different pages, when in fact they are all the same. Each of the 4 urls above could have different page rank and different listings and ranking.
Google is now trying to address canonicalization issues... and I'm sure other engines will follow.
However, in the meantime - yes, there is a risk that thispage.html and thispage.php may be seen as separate urls.
The best way to deal with the issue so you don't lose any ranking or listings would be to have your webmaster set up server level 301s for each page.
: )
Linda
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