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Well, I like the new look, but they BROKE ALL OF THEIR LINKS and utterly failed to put 301 redirects in place. Google hasn't recrawled the site yet so all links
by dandelany 15y ago
Well, I like the new look, but they BROKE ALL OF THEIR LINKS and utterly failed to put 301 redirects in place. Google hasn't recrawled the site yet so all links from Google are broken. I just found this out because I'm looking for "media mail" shipping prices, and the first 3 USPS results in Google are all broken. Google will eventually recrawl them, but I'm sure there are many sites all over the web that link to their old pages, which is gonna hurt them bigtime, SEO-wise.
To anyone working on a site redesign: redirecting old URLs is one of those things that is easy to overlook, but it can make a huge difference in the way prospective visitors see your site. Do not neglect this important step.
Edit: also, their new search sucks, which makes the site nearly unusable. Again, I'm trying to find prices for Media Mail, and I know they have an entire page dedicated to it. But if I search media mail, look at these results:
https://www.usps.com/search.htm?q=media%20mail https://www.usps.com/search.htm?q=media%20mail
The first two links aren't even on usps, they're on eBay! If I surround "media mail" with double quotes, I get better results, but naive users are rarely aware of this trick.
- nanoanderson 15y agoSame thing happened to me with the same searches. Their 404 page is not very helpful, and is dynamically generated, which means Goog's spider may not ever realize that the media mail page doesn't exist at that URL any more (see https://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/senditwithintheus/mediamail.htm https://www.usps.com/send/waystosendmail/senditwithintheus/m... and look at the URL for an example).