Spiders, redirects, and linking

[alienzhavelanded]

Im currently working on redesigning a site done in ASP over to PHP. The old ASP pages have been coded with a 301 redirect and point to the new PHP page. However, I realized that I've removed any links on the site to these old ASP pages. My question is, do the spiders NEED to follow a link to the old ASP page in order to get the 301 or does that not matter? TIA to anyone who answers.

[brian.mark]

They already know of most of your old pages, or you wouldn't have to worry about the 301's. Since they know of them, they have an opinion of the old pages, and thus they'll return to those pages and refer people to them. When they return and see the 301, they know it is now at the new location permanently, so they'll start sending people to the correct page and start checking it out instead of your old one.

That's the long answer. The short answer is that it doesn't matter if you link to it or not, they'll still check to see if it still exists, so you need that 301 for them anyway.

Brian.

[alienzhavelanded]

Thanks for the quick reply. You confirmed what I already figured, that it wouldn't matter. I just wanted to make sure. Here's the link if anyone wants to check it out, its a site on computer history http://www.marznetproductions.com/computing Happy coding!