Good Old Site dropped

After improving the site for users?

[johnser]

We have a site thats been top 10 for the last 2 years on a very commercial KW (9+ million sites)

10 days ago, we added 100 pages of good original text content and redesigned the layout of our links table at the bottom of every page (except the home page which was not touched)

Not over-optimised and written for users.
We've dropped from Top 10 to not in Top 1,000.

No server problems, broken/changed links etc (I think)
Anyone ever seen this before? We haven't.

TIA
J

[ThomasB]

might fit into

[webmasterworld.com...]

[AthlonInside]

What else did you do?

Change Whois Info?
Participate in Adsense?

[Teknorat]

Perhaps there's wisdom in the old saying. "If it ain't broke don't mess with it."

[djgreg]

johnser:
absolute the same happend with one of my domains.
It is a PR7 Domain which was on #1 for a VERY competitive (24 Million results) search term.
I have added some pages and added some links to the frontpage. After about one week the domain was gone from the SERPS, however Pagerank is still 7. Also Goole has lost hundred's of backlinks for this site.
Are the backlinks for your site showing correct?

greg

[webnewton]

What you've done is that you've removed a recognised site(recognised by search engine as an expert site)and replaced it with a new site.
The rankings could drop if you totally changed the url of inner pages of the website.( lets suppose the site had pages like [domain.com...] 2.html, 3.html.....the new sites doesnt have these page but new pages say a.html, b.html. c.html......)

The only way out is that while running the new site you'd run the old site in parallel from the site map till all you new pages get some decent page rank. This should help.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

If this is true (and I stress IF) it would be an example of the new algo's unacceptable inconsistencies. Websites should be allowed to add fresh content without fear of their PR being destroyed.

If this is real and it is allowed to continue it will lead to a serious restriction on development of the Internet. People who have acceptable results will be scared to change anything for fear of their sites being adversely affected. Ultimately it could lead to old, tired sites dominating the SERPs. The only way forward for these sites could be to provide links to their newer, alternative versions, i.e. cloaking!

It does now look like a single word here or there can dramatically affect the results so while Google is the leading SE I will definitely not be making any changes to sites that are holding their own.

Can GoogleGuy offer any reassurances on this because it has really serious implications?

[AthlonInside]

Things seems getting better today.

[ILuvSrchEngines]

>We have a site thats been top 10

Welcome to "Florida"

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Is this true GoogleGuy?

[MHes]

AthlonInside - Change whois info?

Can this effect your Google rankings?

[djgreg]

whois is a point I am thinking of more and more during the last weeks. Would Google be allowed to read the whois info?

And how would they get access to the databases?
I also can't imagine how they would use this data for ranking.

greg

[johnser]

"Things seems getting better today"
Hmmm - I was out yest but now we're back on SERPs but slipped a few places.

Very strange - Invisible on Monday having tried several times throughout the day from different country IPs.

No Whois change
Using Adsense
No change to old URLs - only new ones added

AFAIK, G does have full access to whois details - remembering someone saying that ages ago.

J