pleeker - 11:50 pm on Mar 15, 2005 (gmt 0)

Pleeker, my opinion is that the short answer to your question is yes, especially if the site you refer to was SEO'd relatively conservatively. IP had nothing to do with it, but redesign and nav changes might.

Now, if your opinion is correct ... why? The implication here is that after March '04, a site could be hurt (not penalized, hurt) simply by improving its design and navigation structure. That, to me, is a colossal failure on Google's part.

I don't know how to reply to the "especially" part because I suspect we all have different definitions of conservative SEO. :) The site in question is long on quality content, and short on IBLs. The redesign was done, frankly, with both users and SEs in mind -- we lightened page size substantially for faster loading, graphical buttons were replaced with text for minor added internal anchor text help, the 3rd-level pages were shortened to 2nd level, etc. Seems conservative to me, but I just don't get why changes like this would negatively impact a site that's been online since 1999. As I said, I consider it a failure on G's part.