Upload New Pages, Lose Rank - even when blocked in robots.txt

[underglass]

Does anyone know what may be causing this problem? (Or, where to point me if answers?)

When I upload pages or add a significant amount of content, I lose Google ranking.....page 2 to page 14, for instance. I thought the problem was excessive supplemental pages or long dynamic URLs product display pages created by a database. (This has been going on for nearly two years.)

Two weeks ago I uploaded two new pages, blocked them in the robots.txt, and did not link any of the site to the new pages. Like clockwork (about 2 days) my ranking dropped in all my keywords. Ideally, Google was not supposed to find these page, and if they did, the disallow should have stopped the spider, right?

My theory - There are a lot of sub directories (they may be called something else) that are used to keep my dynamically generated site operational. Do these need to be blocked? Would it cause Google spider to see site changes as magnified?

Any help will be....well......very helpful! Thanks!

[tedster]

I can't see how uploading a new page would hurt the ranking of other pages if Google doesn't spider the new content. Just because one event follows another doesn't mean that the first event CAUSED the second.

[underglass]

Thank you, Tedster - I was afraid of that! Back to the drawing board.

[Arctrust]

underglass

I can second that opinion with my personal experiences.

We upload about 100 new pages a week. Each page is a product that we sell.

We delete about 20-40 pages a week. Each page is a product that we are retiring and has generally been in the SERPS for a while.

If your theory held true, we would be all over the place on the SERPS all the time.

I personally suspect that it might not necessarily have anything to do with the action of loading new pages as Ted said.

Though... you might want to give a quick look at the "semantics" theme to those pages as they may be temporarily confusing the algo as to where the pages belong.... Just a thought.

ARC

[Snappy_fish]

I beg to differ. I have seen this effect. Our established site tanked earlier this year after adding 100 pages of new content, but it did recover three weeks later. Yesterday I also had a client on the phone tellling me that her three sites had disappeared for her main keywords after changing the title tags.

[tedster]

Remember, underglass said the new pages were blocked in robots.txt and not linked to from anywhere else - was your situation the same?

[underglass]

ARC, can you explain this a bit more?

"Though... you might want to give a quick look at the "semantics" theme to those pages as they may be temporarily confusing the algo as to where the pages belong.... Just a thought."

I think Tedster is right - still, it happens every time! If I do not make changes, we stay glued to a page. When I do, down the rabbit hole we go. We come back in about 3 to 4 weeks. Perhaps I am making a false association, but it has happened so many times in the last 2 1/2 years I am beginning to become superstitious.

[Arctrust]

I guess that all I am thinking about is that I upload hundreds of pages per month but all my pages read as follows:

Generic Product Name> Specific Product Manufacturer> Short Product Description

Eac page contains all 3 elements where the first element is always the same regardless of product.

What I try to accomplish here is that all my individual products are tied directly back to the generic name.

Is it possible that while all your pages are relevan,t they may not necessarily have a commonality - semantics wise?

As an aside - I have read numerous threads here where when someone makes a change - sometimes however slight to their Long-Well-Positioned home page or some other page it begins to flop around.

Therefore, are any of these pages affecting in any way the steadiest of pages you have/had?

ARC

[underglass]

Arc, thank you for the answer. I will have to think about it.