dropped by msn/inktomi

[loki]

i have redesigned a new-ish site, and changed it from asp to html for various reasons.

the client says he was getting good results from MSN and Ink but now nothing. i've checked and the site is now not listed, although there are plenty of good links to the site.

is this due to URL changes (ie, from default.asp to index.html), yahoo's new influence or just a glitch, and what do you reckon i should do about it?

thanks.

[qwerty]

A few questions:

1. How long ago did the changes go live?

2. What did you do about the URLs that no longer exist?

[loki]

that was quick.

1. the majority of the new pages went live 16 days ago

2. i deleted all the old asp pages (we also changed servers at the same time). i did add a 404 with the new site map attached.

cheers

[qwerty]

16 days isn't such a long time. I'd give it another couple of weeks before I start worrying. You say you're linked to from other sites, so they'll find you.

I doubt spiders follow links on a 404 page. It's beneficial for people, but bots probably receive the response from the server and just take note of the fact that the URL failed.

Since you went from dynamic to static pages, I doubt a permanent redirect would have worked well in this case.

[loki]

thanks bob, much appreciated.