Did the SSI thing, now PR = 0...

[Paul Hicks]

Hi there,

Have been fidddling with the site for several days. The navigation on the sides, and bottoms of each page, are in a file residing on the server ( SSI-nav.htm & SSI-nav.htm ).

Everything seems to be okay. However, I noticed that my Google traffic has dropped off to nearly nothing, and my page rank that is usually 3-4, is now zero, except for the index page. Could it have anything to do with the fact that the pages now have an extension that used to be .html, is now .shtml ?

Should I re-do my sitemap to to reflect the changes?

Any thoughts?

Regards, Paul.

www.chaletbb.ca

[Andilinks]

Should I re-do my sitemap to to reflect the changes?Yes.

Have you redirected the URL's in your .htaccess file with code as follows?

redirect 301 /page.htm http://www.yourdomain.com/page.shtm

[Paul Hicks]

Yikes, no!

More proof that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I'll do both this evening and hope that Google traffic increases as abruptly as it decreased.

As always, thanks for the help I get from this Community.

Regards, Paul.

[Andilinks]

...and hope that Google traffic increases as abruptly as it decreased.First considering the effect on Google indexing before making any change is always a good idea. I maintain a lot of obsolete file names and file types simply out of the fear of not knowing.

Google sometimes makes the switch quickly and usually gets it right eventually but the waiting can be difficult. I switch a few files per month (on no regular schedule) and still have about 200 non-ssi pages.

[Jeff]

One thing that I like to do is to have my links only:
/directory1/
/directory2/
etc.
so that whether the technology in that directory is index.html index.shtml index.php or index.-something-that-hasn't-come-out-yet it makes no difference to the links.

[Paul Hicks]

I did the

"redirect 301 /page.htm http://www.yourdomain.com/page.shtm"

as suggested by Andilinks, and also your suggestion regarding files. I uploaded the site pages in both .html and .shtml extensions.

I also structured the Google sitemap as per Jeff's suggestion, and resubmitted the sitemap to Google.

Thanks for all suggestions and comments.

Regards, Paul.

[Andilinks]

I uploaded the site pages in both .html and .shtml extensions. If the .html are redirected to the .shtml there is no need to have an .html version online as well. Though they won't do any harm either since no one can reach them via http.

Having duplicate pages will just confuse the bot/index if they do reach them and one version will end up in the "supplemental index" (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34473) so it is better to have just one version online. When I said that I maintain some obsolete file types I did not mean that I maintain duplicates, just obsolete.

[Paul Hicks]

Well, that's what I'm trying to do, is unconfuse the bots. I'll be away for a few days, so I'll leave the html / shtml up until Google returns. It's last visit was February 12th.

Thanks again for feedback, will update.

Paul.

[Paul Hicks]

I think things are working okay now. My Google traffic is increasing daily. Not sure if Yahoo! or MSN traffic has been affected. I did change the sitemaps for Yahoo! and MSN to reflect the files name changes from .html to .shtml.

I deleted all of the .html pages and have seen some of the pages with .shtml file extension appearing in Google serps.

The biggest problem with the .htaccess file was solved by Melissa. I had placed the 301 redirect info in the wrong area, instead at the bottom. Perhaps the text explanation could be made clearer where to place the commands.

Regards, Paul
inHaliburton
www.chaletbb.ca