"Ian Harris" <websolutions@NOSPAMclara.co.uk> wrote in message
news:42733f2b$0$328$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com.. .
> Hi
> I have updated a site that is already listed in the search engines .
> and gets high ranking but this is based on .htm pages
> The problem is the prevoius site, had page file names like this index.htm
> and products.htm
> The new site has page file names like this index.html and products.html .
> do I need to change the html back to htm page file names
>
> Regards
> Ian

By changing the file names you are giving the search engines a whole new
learning job to do, so expect a temporary setback, particularly in respect
of searches that might have displayed old deep pages in the results.
Eventually you may recover - much will depend on the quality of content of
the new pages, compared with the old. If the new pages are really good you
may find them listed high for while to see if people like them.

If you have incoming links direct to certain individual pages try
particularly to have those page names, and their relevent content, retained.

Avoid mention of either index.htm and index.html anywhere on your site pages
and use instead links to the url alone, like http://www.clara.co.uk/ If
you already have incoming links to index.htm or index.html try to get the
originators to simplify to the url only and if this can't be done then make
sure such pages actually exist, even if the lower priority one of them just
says "click here to go to the proper home page". Your server will send out
a page if you ask for http://www.clara.co.uk/ The actual page file name
sent out will depend on an arbitary list of filenames, in priority order,
hidden in the server config file. e.g. index.html, index.htm, default.htm,
default.html etc
Best regards, Eric.