webboy1 - 8:27 am on Aug 27, 2009 (gmt 0)

I agree completely with willybfriendly on this ... and from experience. We did a significant 301 update last year, changing unfriendly URLS to friendly URLs. Within one week of putting these in place, our rankings for various terms went berserk. I've never seen fluctuations like it. However, around 3 - 4 months later, these fluctuations became less and less and the site is now pretty much back where it was.

The total time taken since the change has been aroudn 6 months. Some terms are no longer has high as they were, but others are performing far better than before. Our overall view on the changes, the fluctuations and what seem to be our new base rankings is that the whole process was worth while.

We had periods when we has thoughts like yours, but are now glad we stuck to our initial reasoning and weathered the storm.