The Other Search Engines

**bakerc** · 07-01-2008, 05:21 PM

I recently changed hosts and lost about half my links.

I know they are not the be all and end all but they do have some value for rankings and I would like to find out what happened to them.

Has google re-jigged something?

I have set up all the correct redirects and have set up none www to refer to www etc etc.

Is this a SE update thing or is there something I am missing? Is it normal to lose half your incomming links (literally lost about half which seems very strange)

Any comments would be appreciated.

**vangogh** · 07-01-2008, 08:38 PM

Did you change domains or URLs in any way. If everything is the same you shouldn't have lost any links.

If your URLs did change in any way then you'd want to set up 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs. If you changed domains you'll need to still own the old domain to do this.

How you set up the 301s depends on the type of server you're currently using and what the domains were and now are.

A 301 redirect is what's known as a permanent redirect. Search engines will follow the redirect and give any link juice that was flowing into the old URL to the new URL. At least in theory. They may not transfer all link juice for all pages and some search engines are better at it than others, but the general idea is if you have links pointing into a page that now has a different URL and you set up a 301 from the old URL to the new URL all the seo benefits from the links will be transferred to the new URL.

Even if search engines don't pick up the redirect it's still a good idea to use them since people clicking on the link will be taken to the page on the new URL and anyone who's bookmarked the page will also be redirected to the new URL.

**bakerc** · 07-02-2008, 10:44 AM

Thanks Steve

I have set ul permanent redirects to the URL's that have changed although the domain name has not changed, just some of the page names (from htm to html) but I have set up 301's for this.

I Suppose its just one of those things.

**MrCat** · 07-02-2008, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bakerc

Thanks Steve

I have set ul permanent redirects to the URL's that have changed although the domain name has not changed, just some of the page names (from htm to html) but I have set up 301's for this.

I Suppose its just one of those things.

Any chance there was a prolonged downtime of the site while transferring from host A to host B? This could also have a slight effect especially on your rankings.

**vangogh** · 07-02-2008, 09:52 PM

It sounds like you should be fine Carl. I'll assume everything was set up correctly. It's possible you'll see a temporary loss in search traffic as the engines figure out that page A is now page B, but even if you do it should all come back.

It'll just take them some time to sort things out.

I moved my site to a new domain a couple months ago and set up the redirection and everything worked fine. I actually never noticed any loss in search traffic, which surprised me. I assumed I was going to see some loss. I did some things with the new site that I think will increase search traffic so for all I know maybe the two balanced out to leave me with the same traffic overall.

The search engines still aren't reporting correctly all the links I had and should still have. Some of the links will probably never be seen as pointing to the new domain, but over time many others should.

One more thing you can do, though you probably already have is to change any link under your control to point to the new URLs. If you're pointing forum signatures and things like that. You could also email some of the sites linking to you and let them know you've moved pages and ask if they wouldn't mind changing the URL.