I doubt it  - 72 errors is not a lot in my opinion.I guess its relative vs. the overall size of the site in question though and the number of total pages that makes it up. If I had a site of any great size that only had 72 404 errors I would be very happy.

Does the new site have a custom 404 page? sometimes its not even worth 301 redirecting those URLs (i.e., if there isn't a natural fit for the old page on the new site or if there is no real link equity built up against those legacy URLs). A custom 404 will allow you to remove those old legacy URLs from the search index and still provide an improved route into fresh content for the search bots in the meantime.

Ultimately though I think you probably need to look deeper into the ranking drops than the 404 errors.

Best of luck with it.

Ben

No, I don't need to watch the videos I've seen and heard that stuff before. I'm just saying I don't buy the fact that blue-widgets vs. blue_widgets has any impact whatsoever on a sites ability to rank for "blue widgets".

Maybe a few years ago, but not today.

Hence I see no value in risking link equity to change from underscores to hyphens.

Show me some examples where you think it impacts rankings....

**sorry didn't mean to sound arsey there I just don't think one variation its necessarily better than the other when it comes to rankings. I really do think it purely boils down to preference of how it looks.

Ben

I was considering doing the same thing a couple of weeks back and decided the change wasn't worth it.

1. Hyphenated URLs do generally speaking just look nicer, but how likely is that to impact things like UX or CTR rates? (unlikely). It certainly doesn't impact rankings - just do some generic searches and you'll find a real mixed bag of hyphens and underscored URLs in the listings.

2. If your underscored URLs have been around for a long time then chances are you have some link equity built up into at least some of those URLs. 301 redirecting from underscored to hyphenated versions of the same content is an  unnecessary risk to some of that link equity.

If I had a relatively new site, low traffic from organic search and no real link equity then I probably would take the plunge and update from underscores to hyphens, but it would be an almost cosmetic move based on my own personal preferences. In your case I would advise against updating the URLs unless the domain has no pre-existing equity to give up.

Ben

Their current solution seems to be something along the lines of:

***** Rating: 8.4/10 - 900 Reviews

almost forcing two different review "views" into the same listing, which seems a little dumb from a UI perspective.

Thanks again,

This is an area where Google seem a bit pants to be honest. I have seen loads of examples where a hotel might have a rating of 7 out of 10 and Google shows 5 stars in the rich snippet data.

Not exactly a great user experience right there.

Thanks Kane - looks like I am on the right track then. The other area I am struggling on is the mark up around reviews / star ratings.

i.e., what happens if your star ratings aren't out of 5? Google seems to make a mess of the display. I.e., I can find a hotel with a rating of 7/10 where Google will show it as 5 star in the results set.

So do I try and force the adoption of using a scale from 1-5 or is it possible to use schema mark up on a 1-10 scale?

I am looking at potentially using some Schema mark up on hotel listing pages. This is for an OTA where lots of hotels from all over the world are available for selection (think hotels.com, booking.com, agoda.com etc)

For the itemscope itemtype on say the hotel name should I be defining it as http://schema.org/hotel or http://schema.org/localbusiness

For example against the hotel name I would have:

Grand Plaza Hanoi

I assume its the former, but I was just after some 2nd opinions.

Thanks,

Ben

Thanks this is the kind of 2nd opinion I was looking for

Hi Ryan,

Sure, I've had 302's in place for years on some domains myself but this was more a question around two parts I guess:

1. Has anyone seen it potentially have an impact to the site the 302 is pointing at?
2. Has anyone found that having a 302 in place for a long period of time then has an impact on that domains ability to get re-picked up and indexed should the 302 become a 200 again.

If you take the "best practice" conversation out of the equation then my own personal view is there is no real risk in having a 302 in place for a considerable period of time.

Ben

I know what best practice is folks - the question is "how long is it safe to use a 302 temporary redirect?"

Hi All,

Lets assume there is site A and site B, both sites are live on the internet today as standalone businesses, but they sell very similar products.

Site B has built up some link equity and will eventually become the domain for site A due to an organisational re-brand.

For the time being however site A will remain, but site B needs to disappear temporarily, but not lose the link equity which has been built up against it.

My current thinking is to 302 redirect site B to site A such that users and search bots accessing site B will be redirected to site A whilst leaving the link equity that exists against site B fully intact and allowing us to continue to grow it should we wish to.

The question is, does anybody have a view on how long it is safe to use a 302 temporary redirect for? i.e., is 8-10 months to long.

Thanks,

Ben