Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Is this common?
If you can give us an idea of what changes were made maybe we can help.
Changing site design can hurt ranking, but not ever.
Was it just the design you changed or did you change the text, links, titles, structure, document flow, HTML text tags etc?
Sid
It is probably tied to some sort of anti-spam re-check of your site and its content. If your link pattern also suddenly changes (especially if lots of your oldest links STOPed linking to you), then I suspect you would be in real big trouble for a very long time.
Maybe you have to "prove" your worth again, though I suspect this takes only a few weeks to months to do, rather than the 9 to 12 months that is reported for completely new sites (a.k.a. "sandbox {that doesn't exist (according to Google)}).
Do your new pages have more or less html code?
In my experience changing from straigh Html to CSS usually give you a better ranking.
Changing to pages having more code is a risk.
If your pages are "heavier" then before it can penalize you.
1. Use of Javascript Links
2. Loads of use of images and less text
3. The inner pages should be accessible from the homepage
4. The content should be natural on the pages
5. Have you changed the page naming or extensions?
Nothing else has been changed.
Damn! Google is really a DICKtator!
I just changed the graphics
Have you changed all graphics at once?
If it is so Google may be just needs time to find out what happens. They have limited computational power. I hope that all will be OK soon.
However it is interesting that Google takes into account the images now. It seems the only way to change the site right is to do it step by step, little by little.
Vadim.
The flow of the text only view of the document is also important. If your previous design had links at the top and main content below this and your new design hs the links further down (or vice versa) then this may affect your ranking.
Look at an old page and the new page equivalent in a Lynx type browser and compare the two.
Also have you checked that you are dropped from the two main datasets that are currently in circulation?
Sid
Could be similar the google text only cache?
Once it has been done dont panic. You now have to wait.
You have done what you believe to be a good thing for your users. Just wait a bit let things settle DONT DO anything else drastic for a time and hope your site will come back.
Keep adding new content at a reasonable rate but dont go over board. As someone once said in an online game to me .. or was it I said to them .. patience in this game is a winning virtue, just be patient.
gl mate
On my site, just about everything changed from top to bottom. I got away from the dreaded heavy html (tables... a TON of tables) and went to a fluid css. The css is so good, that there are hardly any tags anywhere.... i think the index page comes in at a little 12k file.
Furthermore, the owners bought the site 3 years ago (it had been up since 1999 tho)... and never changed anything until I got my hands on it a couple of months ago.
In the end, I felt that my changes were good to get the overall size down, makes it easier on me as an administrator, and much more user friendly for both people and bots.
However, I completely wiped out 98% of the old site... because I felt the file structure was a complete pile of garbage (every page had it's own folder). It appears that doing so, hurt my internal link popularity or something... cause google can no longer find those pages. And those pages had been there for many years.
Knowing that, should I expect my site to bounce back in a month or two... or is this some sort of year long set back... like i've started a brand new site?
In the future, should people stick with their original file structure no matter what?
(uhg... i hope i don't loose my job!)
If you have a good site working well in my own opinion you should not really change much of it. Ye olde Yorkshire saying comes to mind .. "If it aint broke, dont fix it!"
Google's supposed philosophy is you are supposed to make sites for people. Yet, a major overhaul of a site even it is to make the site "better for the user" chances are will be frowned upon.
If you can imagine all of the files in your site have suddenly changed size. Googlebot has been crawling round these for ages. One day it sees everything as different thus it sets flags that can mean 1) you now need a deep crawl and or 2) a good site in its opinion has now all changed and it must make up its mind again. Googlebot is basically lazy.
Having said this I dont believe there is any real harm in adding to a template in small ways. It is also worth realising modern css allow for much to be done to make things look better yet keeping the main / important parts of the site intact.
Just my 2 cents ...
Cool state of mind to be in ... I like it
