Does going .htm to .php matter?

[Illinois lawyer]

My site added a database component. All of our pages are the same as before content wise, but the files are now .php b/c we list lawyers that are relevant to the information on our page. These names are pulled from our database and this info changes on a daily basis.

Yesterday a.m. our divorce page was #3 in google and showing up as .htm in their cache. Last night it was cached as .php and now it's gone.

I want to have a quality site for my readers and adding the db content helps do that. But is this improvement the reason for my site drop? Any suggestions on getting the ranking back while keeping the improvement?

[SeoCatfish]

yes because your old URLs are not the same pages as your new ones, especially as it relates to link connectivity. I recommend doing a 301 redirect from all your old pages to your new ones. This will help ease the impact of the transition. However, anytime you change file extensions you run the risk of hurting your rankings, especially in the short term.

[Marcia]

I believe there's a way to use mod_rewrite to have those new .php pages still show up with the .htm file extension. That would be the best solution altogether, since the URLs would all still stay the same, despite the change in technology.

BTW, I moved this to the Dynamic Sites forum, since it's a technology issue.

[SeoCatfish]

I believe there's a way to use mod_rewrite to have those new .php pages still show up with the .htm file extension. That would be the best solution altogether, since the URLs would all still stay the same, despite the change in technology.

BTW, I moved this to the Dynamic Sites forum, since it's a technology issue.

That is true but since the change has already been made, it might be easier to go with the 301s at this point although I would have to know more about the whole project to make that determination. But certainly another great solution.

[Illinois lawyer]

Thanks for the replys. We did do 301's before we switched. The site is almost exactly the same, just says .php. Why would that make things disappear and is making look like .htm going to fix it? I hate the thought of all of this b/c it's almost like I'm trying to trick the search engine which I don't want to do/never try to do, but to lose rankings over the extension is crazy.

Suggestions?

[SeoCatfish]

its not that you are trying to trick the search engines. Every URL is a seperate unique page to the search engines. If all your file extensions change then essentially all your pages have changed in which case the engines need to reindex them and then reestablish what those pages are relevant for. In the process your listings will drop for a while but if you're 301's are in place then it shouldn't take long to recover.

[Jazajay]

You do have to bare in mind 301's can take a while to pass over as in days or months. I personally think it has to do with trust,time established,PR and size to explain why some site pass over quickly and others have reported a wait of 6 months.

I recently advised my brother-in-law on doing 301's it's been 3 months and Googles just passed it over while Yahoo and MSN, bare in mind MSN spiders him more often, havn't as of last week.
He has a PR of 3, moderate size and been established for around 2yrs no black hat. But with few links back.

It'll be the 301's that will take the time to get your site back in the SERPS. Get more links and just wait it out.

Jaza

[proson]

I don't think so. If your php file contains query string it may matter otherwise don't worry about this.