Question : fake googlebot

We recently converted some pages from php to static html.  In the process the file names changed.  Mistakenly, knowing Google likes static pages, we assumed we would be reindexed in a reasonable amount of time starting with our home page.  We took the existing php files that had acquired some rank and changed the content to something reasonable and relevant for our site, and put original content on these new .html pages.

In my stats  I see all the search engines, and fresh google bot is going to the old php pages and not the new .html ones or to our home page.  The new html pages have our main content.  Additionally there is something labled as "Fake Google bot" going to the home page.  I have no idea what that is.  The big question is should I wait this out and hope google will eventually go to the home page and go through the index, or should I go back in time and get those php pages to hold the original content?  Right now it's not visiting the home page or it's immediate links to our next pages.

Yahoo is finding the home page and spidering from there including new pages.  MSN seems to be finding the old pages.

Answer : fake googlebot

To answer your other question, if the original php pages are causing problems you couls either change them to:


require("new_html_page.html");

?>

to quickly get the new content into them, or better still add a .htaccess file (assuming mod_rewrite is enabled) to generate 301 Moved Permanently responses and redirect to the new content. Your users shouldn't notice the difference but google will certainly take note and amend it's indexes.

Mike