how to stop SE's listing both url's ?

Hello
Am really worried, so wondered if anyone could help.

My site outgrew itself recently so we've had to make changes to the url
structure.
I have some important url's like this: www.mysite.com/bluewidgets/, Yet now
with the expansion of the site and url structure change (had to be done) we
also have urls like: www.mysite.com/country1/bluewidgets/ which serves up
identical content to the above first url.

Is this bad? There is no way around it, cause if i dump my old url (i have
50 important ones kept) I will have to get around 6,000 webmasters to change
my link url on their pages, which i dont want to have to do.
My programmer says it wont be a problem with google etc, but i'm worried. I
rely on this site for my income.
Is it possible to stop google from crawling and most importantly listing the
50 new url's in the new format? So it sticks with the old ones? Everything
is done with php/mod rewrite rules and so its not simple for me to know.
Or is it possible to have 50 redirects from the new url's to the old ones?
Will that stop google listing both?

How do i get round this? The problem is, because the site is very much
database driven, i have no way of making it use the old format url's for the
50 in question. I hope this all makes sense. Thanks for any help,

Chris

Chris wrote:

> Hello
> Am really worried, so wondered if anyone could help.
>
> My site outgrew itself recently so we've had to make changes to the url
> structure.
> I have some important url's like this: www.mysite.com/bluewidgets/, Yet now
> with the expansion of the site and url structure change (had to be done) we
> also have urls like: www.mysite.com/country1/bluewidgets/ which serves up
> identical content to the above first url.
>
> Is this bad? There is no way around it, cause if i dump my old url (i have
> 50 important ones kept) I will have to get around 6,000 webmasters to change
> my link url on their pages, which i dont want to have to do.
> My programmer says it wont be a problem with google etc, but i'm worried. I
> rely on this site for my income.
> Is it possible to stop google from crawling and most importantly listing the
> 50 new url's in the new format? So it sticks with the old ones? Everything
> is done with php/mod rewrite rules and so its not simple for me to know.
> Or is it possible to have 50 redirects from the new url's to the old ones?
> Will that stop google listing both?
>
> How do i get round this? The problem is, because the site is very much
> database driven, i have no way of making it use the old format url's for the
> 50 in question. I hope this all makes sense. Thanks for any help,
>
> Chris
>
>


Hi Chris,

Have a look at the following article:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/urls/

Should point you in the right direction.

Grz, Juliette

"Chris242" wrote:
> Hello
> Am really worried, so wondered if anyone could help.
>
> My site outgrew itself recently so we've had to make changes
> to the url
> structure.
> I have some important url's like this:
> www.mysite.com/bluewidgets/, Yet now
> with the expansion of the site and url structure change (had
> to be done) we
> also have urls like: www.mysite.com/country1/bluewidgets/
> which serves up
> identical content to the above first url.
>
> Is this bad? There is no way around it, cause if i dump my old
> url (i have
> 50 important ones kept) I will have to get around 6,000
> webmasters to change
> my link url on their pages, which i dont want to have to do.
> My programmer says it wont be a problem with google etc, but
> i'm worried. I
> rely on this site for my income.
> Is it possible to stop google from crawling and most
> importantly listing the
> 50 new url's in the new format? So it sticks with the old
> ones? Everything
> is done with php/mod rewrite rules and so its not simple for
> me to know.
> Or is it possible to have 50 redirects from the new url's to
> the old ones?
> Will that stop google listing both?
>
> How do i get round this? The problem is, because the site is
> very much
> database driven, i have no way of making it use the old format
> url's for the
> 50 in question. I hope this all makes sense. Thanks for any
> help,
>
> Chris

From what I have read, the best way is with permanent redirects.
Google talks about it: http://www.google.com/remove.html#change_url

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.oO("Chris" <picturesofengland(on spami)@hotmail.com>)

>My site outgrew itself recently so we've had to make changes to the url
>structure.
>I have some important url's like this: www.mysite.com/bluewidgets/, Yet now
>with the expansion of the site and url structure change (had to be done) we
>also have urls like: www.mysite.com/country1/bluewidgets/ which serves up
>identical content to the above first url.
>
>Is this bad?

No, if done properly. Cool URIs don't change.

>There is no way around it, cause if i dump my old url (i have
>50 important ones kept) I will have to get around 6,000 webmasters to change
>my link url on their pages, which i dont want to have to do.

Keep the old URLs alive - don't drop them! Redirect them with a 301
("Moved Permanently") HTTP status code to the new URLs. There are
different ways to achieve this (script or server configuration:
mod_alias, mod_rewrite).

>My programmer says it wont be a problem with google etc, but i'm worried. I
>rely on this site for my income.

Having multiple URLs pointing to the same resource is always bad, it
confuses search engines and caches (the same resource will be cached
multiple times).

Micha

Chris wrote:

> How do i get round this? The problem is, because the site is very much
> database driven, i have no way of making it use the old format url's
> for the 50 in question. I hope this all makes sense.

If it is about preventing search engines from indexing pages you might want
to search for informations about the robots.txt file which allows you to
exclude specified files and folders from search engine indexing. You can
also use the meta robots tag, but you have to include this one into the HTML
head of every page.

HTH
Markus