I’m glad that you only have to change a few things on your sites.
With my new sites I change a few things and everythings fine. But if you’ve been doing sites for 12 years like I have and have more than 100 sites it takes a little longer to update it all. And yes, some deep pages still are listed after all that time and getting traffic. Consider 100 sites with 1,000 pages each. You are talking 100,000 pages where the old banner code may be lurking.
I just got done updating and fixing stuff for two months. Now I have to go back and do some more.
For sure, new systems give better results and change IS the name of the game.
It seems odd to me that a huge outfit would need to “Clarify” such an important email so soon. Maybe if I had gone to the CAP conventions I may have gotten “wind” of it earlier.
The unresolved question for me is “what happens to surfers clicking on old links”. Do they get credited to me under the old system, ( if so, for how long), do they get a general error or do they get “sucked up” as a house account.