Old link redirects

[Ash Kendall]

Hi guys,

I'd guess that this is planned already already, but will you be placing redirects on the old forums links? I have an old link saved for racedepartment.com/forums.php, which is currently getting a 404 error. Obviously it's easy enough to update, but for SEO reasons you may want to set up an htaccess 301 redirect so these sort of links are sent to the right place.

This bookmark has worked on occasion so I'm guessing something is in place, but there are plenty of the main forum links that are completely different and throw up various errors at the moment.

Again, I'd hazard a guess that it's one of many updates due, but I thought I'd at least make you aware in case you'd overlooked it.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Hi, better update your bookmark to http://www.racedepartment.com or www.racedepartment.com/forum/

The old one will not come back and we left it with a 404 for a reason. Google has already reindexed it because of the error. 301's will not force reindexation

 

[Warren Dawes]

Hi, better update your bookmark to http://www.racedepartment.com or www.racedepartment.com/forum/

The old one will not come back and we left it with a 404 for a reason. Google has already reindexed it because of the error. 301's will not force reindexation

Bram, I have been getting Emails from members who can't access the Forum/Website. I have been passing on the advice posted in this section (which should fix them up ok).
I actually found the new Forum address using Google after my bookmark was outdated.

One point though:
It is great to have these helpful solutions posted here, but it not helping those who can't get access in the first place to see them.
Is there any other way to communicate the changes?

 

[Ivo Simons]

Bram is using Facebook etc also to help people.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

If they cannot enter through those two links I suggested they have a really bad provider that hasn't updated their DNS still.

When all the work is done in a few weeks we will sent out an email to our memberbase and provide them all the needed information. For the moment I cannot do more than I already did.

 

[Ash Kendall]

A 301 redirect is generally used for moving pages. It doesn't help Google index, it just stops them bringing up 404 errors on relocated pages.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

In the next week we need those 404's otherwise google will not remove the old links. The last hour i have manually demoted a lot of links from google, so it should speed things up.

Unfortunately these things take time but the main forums and pages that are visited the most (main url & forum url) will come back pretty quickly with the amount of traffic we have.