: Will changing SHTML files to PHP change effect how search engines index my site? I have a lot of SHTML pages. If I change these to PHP to add some more functionality (obviously changing stuff

@Kristi941

It's also possible for you to run .shtml pages as PHP pages without having to change your file extension. All you need to do is tell Apache to handle .shtml pages as PHP. The following snippet will do that for you:

<FilesMatch ".shtml$">
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>


That way you don't have to worry about redirects or pages being reindexed because to users and search engines the URLs will be the same.

Update

1) Google does index pages with query strings just fine. Having them is not a bad thing at all is very common and normal.

2) How ever you are using SSI you can do it the same way in PHP so if you don't have query strings in your .shtml pages then you won't need them in your .php either.

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@Angie530

Will they still index the PHP files
the same as the old SHTML and just as
often, etc.?


Providing that the resulting content is served up as HTML with the correct content-type, yes.


Will there be any difference?


If all of the URI's indexed by the search engines are presently in the form of domain.com/file.shtml this will be a major change (your content will effectively disappear until search engines pick up on the new URI's).

You should implement 301 - Permanent redirects from the old URI's to the new URI's for your content (ex. domain.com/file.php) if you want your site's content to maintain its present rankings with major search engines.

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