I read somewhere that renaming pages would typically not hurt PageRank, but if it did, the former PR would come back quickly. I renamed a couple of PR=1 pages on my site and they have been PR:n/a since I did (8 weeks ago). Guess I was fooled
You have to do a 301 redirect form the old url to the new url or it will hurt your PR for those pages. This is best done in .htaccess. If you don't then the new pages have no incoming links. You rankings may dip temporarily, but should perk up again if you do it right when you change the name. You need to remember that Toolbar PageRank is only updated about every 3 months. The PR could be fine, but you'll never know it until they do an update. Internally Google updated PageRank for each page all the time, but every 3 months or so, they publish a snapshot of that for the Toolbar PageRank, which is what everyone sees. Basically it is a good idea not to rename pages unless necessary, but when you do, 301 them and relax.
As far as im aware remaining a page is just like creating a new one, unless you use a 301 redirect as stated above by webgeek.
I forgot to add, that I indeed did a 301 redirect on the pages in question. But recalling the event, I might have done it too late. I think I did the renaming 1 week prior to doing the redirects. Not smart , I guess. But the .htaccess thing is new to me.
Use common sense. How would Google know that you actually renamed a page to other? Either expect zero PR on renamed page or use 301 redirect from older page to newer. So that Google know you have moved/renamed page.
if you renamed the files, you must use 301 redirect from old one to new one. if you dont redirect these pages, those pages will loose their pr 1
If your pages is renamed and then crawled by google spider then u have to wait and nothing special can be done until the next crawl event. Double check your url rewrite in .htaccess file and verify it. Page Rank depends on the links comming to your pages and according to google, you have removed those pages from your site and added new pages (of course the renamed pages) and there is no link from any website pointing to them. The result is page rank zero.
Thanks for the inputs. I've been quite an idiot on this issue, but hopefully this will be resolved with the next PageRank snapshot. My redirects are working. Unfortunately, they were implemented a little late in the process, which is probably the reason for my problems.
Shouldn't be an issue - just point a few new links at the old page, Google will follow them, take the 301 and associate the new page accordingly. I imagine Google wont kill a page completely for a while after first encountering a 404. They may not crawl it too regularly to recheck though, hence the use of a few links above.
Your are not fooled, The thing is you have to wait for the next toolbar export to see the results on the toolbar and PR checkers.