Changing .html to .asp in URLs

[Bush_JSM]

Hi Mozzers,

I have a question. The webmaster of a client of mine needs to make changes to some files which will effect the URL's.

Essentially everything is staying the same but the end of the URL will change from .html to .asp.

This is because the site will be dynamically loading content (perhaps from a database) (i.e. latest news to come from their blog etc..)  In order to do this we would need to change the filenames of the whole website.  (i.e. personnel.html would become personel.asp).

Changing URLs can harm indexation but a small change to the end - would Google drop these pages? A 301 redirect is not possible from old URL to new.

What impact would this have on Rankings?

Thanks

Gareth

[Bush_JSM]

Hi Kevin, O French and Dr Pete,

Thanks for your input - I'm being told a 301 isn't possible but looking at your comments we can do it and I'll push for it.

Thanks so much for all of your help

Bush

[Dr-Pete]

Yeah, I'm with Kevin - there's a way to do a 301-redirect, and you need to find it. Otherwise, you'll lose the value of most of the current links to your site, and you'll create a ton of 404s from visitors and links with old URLs trying to find the old content. That's an SEO nightmare waiting to happen, and it's bad for usability, too.

[futureautomation]

Similar to Kevin's response, I have a section in my web.config performing a similar action, should be something like this I believe -

<match url="^([a-z]*).htm"></match>

<action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}.asp"></action>

This should just redirect any instance of .htm to .asp.

[Klarke]

Why isn't a 301 possible?  If the host doesn't have ISAPI_Rewrite, then a custom 404 that contains a 301 will work.

There would be a big impact on rankings otherwise.