Is it my redevelopment or google that's screwing things up?

Things have gone haywire since redesign

[marakkesh]

A caveat - I couldn't find an 'ideal' place for this message, but my adsense earning are definitely being affected.

I have been running a website now for several years and over the course of the last year and a half I have made 4 major site updates -

Each update has increased traffic to a large degree. First it was a question of optimizing the site, finally it's come down to the fine tuning.

A few months ago I completed update number 3 which included a redesign and minor tweaking, and things were going great - 600+ uniques a day average, and close to 2,000 page views a day.

Not being content to let things stay still, a couple of weeks ago I completed the grandaddy of redesigns. The site looks great - it's extremely useful. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback, there are goodies and things for people to use, and I felt good knowing that I had made my user's experience better.

Google hates it. Since the redesign (and minor redevelopment) my indexed pages have been dropping like flies, and my traffic has been cut by a quarter. I don't depend on the site to support me, but I certaintly don't like seeing my adsense earnings drop by 2/3 either. Could I have really screwed things up by changing the site again? Every other time I have made an update, the traffic dropped for a bit, but came back in spades.

I have read some threads about weird things going on with google indexing, but I just don't know where to begin. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Gordon

[jomaxx]

A couple of weeks is hardly enough time to see what Google thinks of the new design. You need a couple of months minimum, especially since major updates are a lot fewer and farther between than they used to be.

Having said that, if you're actually changing your directory/URL structure each time then I think you ARE shooting yourself in the foot.

[marakkesh]

No, nothing as substantial as that - in terms of redevelopment, it's been a paring each time, from table-based layout to all css, to more judicious use of tags, simpler code. Lean and mean.

But, My indexed pages have dropped from 10,000 + to somewhere around 350, and that fluctuates daily (between 300 and 800 pages.)

[jomaxx]

Anyway I'm pretty sure it's too soon to worry, but beyond that I can't help you. My Google optimization skills are still rooted in the days back when there was a new index every month, and a "Freshbot" came through and sprinkled newly spidered pages into the index each day.

There's a Google News forum where people still follow things very carefully, but it's turned into data center Hell. It seems like you can't understand what's happening any more unless you have A Beautiful Mind.

[tedster]

Google has recently changed their infrastructure and this is causing hiccups for many sites. For some, just waiting has resulted in their rankings coming back.

But, in the mean time, I think you should give your site a self-checkup. These threads cover many technical issue that you should look for and address if you find them:

Checklist for Sudden Drops in Rank [webmasterworld.com]
Dropped from Google - a checklist to find out why [webmasterworld.com]
Dropped Site Checklist [webmasterworld.com]

[marakkesh]

Thank for the replies.

I haven't been dropped from google, and neither has my index age dropped ranked (steady pr 5 for a couple of years...)

I suppose it is a waiting game now.

Thanks again.

Gordon