Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I recently (2 weeks ago to be exact) put out a completely new (previously established) web site with a lot of changes (completely new in fact) to the URL-scheme. This site has been running since 2002, and been happily indexed in Google.
As far as possible, I've made it a point to redirect old pages to new ones, but that's really not possible to achieve on all pages.
I've been kind of out of the active SEO/Webmaster-loop for a few years and I really don't know how Google updates anymore.
I am interested to know how long (approx.) it will take Google these days to re-index my page and what to expect in the coming weeks/months. I've had as many as around 500k pages in there before (a few years ago @pr5). Now, since around Nov. I am at pr4 and with around 25k pages indexed.
I expect these changes to have a large impact on search engine traffic, however, these first few weeks have been very uneventful traffic- and SERP-wise, overall traffic is marginally down (as can be expected) and the bounce rates are all within 5% of 'old normal'.
Compared to years back, Google updates the SERPs and even tweaks the algo on a nearly continual basis - no big single "Google dance" any more.
Crawling and indexing 500,000 new urls could take a long time - unless your home page PR raises above the PR4 level, I would expect it to take many, many months to approach even a level of 70%. Also appreciate that big sites never see all their urls in the Google index.
As far as possible, I've made it a point to redirect old pages to new ones, but that's really not possible to achieve on all pages.
Even though you can't redirect all your pages it would probably be worth it to go through all the external links coming into your site and at least redirecting those. That way you'll keep the link juice which should help get more of your pages indexed faster.
Yes, I remember 'the dance' and the fuss that came with it :) Sad to see it is gone.
I am curious, does this continous updating mean that the SERP positions of new(ly) indexed pages are 100% calulated as they can already be seen apprearing in Google, and that only algo/pr changes or pages that are added to or removed from the Google index for similar keywords will change that placement? Because I am seeing new pages in the SERPS already, I just took it for granted they were temporary placements that would change in a coming update for some reason.
I've read about "the January update" here, but I have not found out what exactly that means, is it an algo change only - or a pr update, and are these regular monthly events?
Freelistfool: I am aware of the redirection/pr-thing and doing my best to keep what I have to work with. My first goal will be getting the pr5 back before too long by establishing some more good backlinks.
I'd suggest you read up on the patent section of our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com]. It could be a real eye-opener.
