Pagerank loss
Due to unforeseen circumstances, my url for this blog changed ever so slightly (and I changed the design). Not much mind you, but it did change and for the first few weeks Google did not rank my page at all. However, Google did show up my new pages in SERPs. The reason for the change to the url was to structure the Equator website and the Equator Live website with a better dynamic.
Now, Google has decided to award me with a Pagerank of zero. Great. Before my url changed, I had managed to get up to a Pagerank of 2 and I am sure this was due to rise again soon (I have a hunch about that – don’t dare ask why, as I don’t know). Therefore, I have dropped position in searches and completely lost my Pagerank.
Here is the question then – will Google eventually realise that this is the same blog as it was before (I remember reading something about e-consultancy changing their url and they lost their Pagerank. And some terms that they were ranking highly for)? I am unsure what will happen.
Unfortunately, a lot of the inbound links that I have accumulated point to my old url (which do redirect to the new url) so how does this affect it? Does that make these links obsolete? Am I going to have to go on an Equator business development drive again to gain good links pointing to the new url? I don’t know the answers to these questions, so go ahead, make my day…
If you 301 redirect the old url locations to the new ones you’ll retain the pr for those urls, and the link juice from any links pointing to them.
There are a handful of ways to implement 301s depending on your server plaform, so I’ll leave you to figure out what’s best for you.
I’d be rolling the head of whoever made the switch without adding redirect though. Better dynamic or not.
Hi dude. Right I’ve had a look at your old URL and your new URL to see what I can see.
Andy’s completely right that 301 redirects on links is the way to go I’ve just checked the old url (http://equatorlive.com/blogs/mmmbop/) and followed the HTTP headers through to the new URL (http://equatorlive.com/mmmbop/). And you’ve got a 301 redirect in place which is good – so you’ll get all your link juice etc passed onto your new page soon (which is cool as you;ve got some nice links coming in from the BBC that you don’t want to lose)
I’ve also had a look to see what the displayed PageRank is on each of these pages – (the canconical versions too as equatorlive is still set up without ‘www’ and wanted to see where we are with it) – I get a toolbar PageRank of 0 on both during my tests.
So I did a bit more digging and started checking the domain level PageRank and that from the starting point in the equatorlive redirect chain – http://www.eqtr.com redirects to http://equatorlive.com – and neither of these seem to have any page rank see here.
I was getting strange PageRank results yesterday and it could be that there is something strange going on.
I’ll do some more digging and see what I can find.
M