Webuser Forums: Site Rebuild Expectation

I am a small internet publisher in a competetive field. I had my site rebuilt after 3 years in mid 2006. I had been achieving a growing number of visitors to 1300 a day. My traffic was being measured by URCHIN. When the site was rebuilt,traffic levels instantly dropped to about 250 per day (Analytics). As we had just secured our first 'grown up' advertiser I was devastated.I lost part of the advertising revenue and of course they didn't renew. It cost me a great deal to try and lift traffic levels. I had impressed how important it was that traffic levels were maintained. Neither I nor the developer could work out why traffic levels dropped so much. Two years and tens of thousands of pounds later I am still only attracting 900 visitors a day. I have since learned that the problem was probably that the site rebuilder did not use 301 redirects on my old URLs. This rebuild has done untold and permanent damage to my business. Should the site builder have known to use 301s? Could I reasonably have expected them to have employed them? Do I have any sort of claim against them? Is there any sort of industry body to whom a complaint can be made? As is so often the case there was no contract as such, just verbal reassurance of their so-called expertise.I wouldn't have known to specify the use of 301s on respected and trusted URLs

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