Google sitemap & reindex question

[Prometheus]

I recently had my web host change me over to document roots for all of my website. However, as I will explain in a minute, this means that all of the indexed pages now bring up nonsense when they are accessed from Google.

Here is what I mean. One of my sites is www.kittycoupon.com. I had placed it in the /kc directory in my web server. For the past year, it was listed as www.kittycoupon.com/kc/index.php. Last week, I had my web host drop the /kc, so now it (and every page) is just www.kittycoupon.com/index.php.

How long will it take Google to reindex all of my pages and purge the old ones? I was getting decent trafic before, and I hope I will get even better traffic in the future. However, how long will that likely be, does anyone know?

I also had this done to some of my car sites, such as www.chevysuburbanclub.com. Interestingly, this is currently listed as #1 on MSN for the term "Chevy Suburban", but it doesn't really even blip on Google.

[computergenius]

You could set a 301 in your .htaccess file, so that visitors to kc/thispage.html is automatically forwarded to /thispage.html.

A 301 will tell Google, and site visitors, that the page has permanently moved, and will automatically, invisibly, forward them to the new pages.

It could take six months to get back where you were if you do not do this urgently.

[Prometheus]

I think I came across the solution. If anyone has anything to add, please let me know.

The site is such. www.kittycoupon.com/index.php. Before, it was www.kittycoupon.com/kc/index.php. It's still in that directory, but my web host cut off the /kc directory reference. If someone tries to access the /kc files, it's as if it were looking for http://www.kittycoupon.com/kc/kc/index.php. So, I just have to copy the files into a directory called /kc and have them redirect as you mentioned.

Anyone see a flaw in this?

[computergenius]

Yes!

A standard redirect will not suit search engines, they will see the page /index.php as new, and will gradually drop the kc pages - you want 'instant' change of search engine listing, not 6 months.

You need a 301 direct.

Create a file called .htaccess which just contains two lines:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^kc/(.*) /$1 [R=301,L]

which is probably wrong as I am tired!

Upload it to your root directory, and use your browser to go to /kc/index.php - you should end up at /index.php, with just /index.php in your browser.

If you get a 500 error, then just delete the .htaccess, and everything will be OK again, because it means that I got something wrong!

[Prometheus]

... and the 301 redirect works great. Thank you very much.