proper way of changing site

[Jon Dapron]

Hi,
Im removing a directory from my site. I placed the 301 moved permanently code on the old page, which is already indexed in search engines.
My question is should i excluded this directory (that has been removed and replaced with the redirect code) on my robots file, or will this exclusion cause it to never be viewed and known that it has been moved permanently?
Thanks in advance!

[Rydberg]

You ask a lot of pretty advanced questions about search engines.. I think you'll have better luck here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/

[Willy Duitt]

Originally posted by Rydberg
You ask a lot of pretty advanced questions about search engines.. I think you'll have better luck here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/

That and the Search Engine Tactics (http://www.htmlforums.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=17) forum is the proper venue for these types of questions.

.....Willy

[creative666]

I wouldnt say that it was an advanced question.

You should not exclude the directory, if it is excluded by the robots file then Google, MSN, Yahoo will never find the 301 as they will only view the robots file and not go into the folder. Your only hope is that they would see the folder before the robots.txt file as they may follow a direct link to the index page of the folder.

[Jon Dapron]

thank you so much
i waited for a long time for a response on this one!

that makes complete sense, too. wow, what a relief!