Google Sitemap change followed by huge drop in URLs indexed. Why?

[Propools]

I'm in a pickle.
We recently made a change to our sitemap to correct some re-direct
issues that Googlebot had and now the number of URL's indexed has gone
from over 1300 to 7, yes that's right seven.

Would someone please give me some pointers as to why this may be
happening?

<snip>No links please, as per TOS</snip>

[edited by: trillianjedi at 9:33 pm (utc) on Feb. 19, 2008]

[Robert Charlton]

My emphasis...

We recently made a change to our sitemap to correct some re-direct issues that Googlebot had and now...

Propools - The section of your post that I've bolded jumped out at me as perhaps the root of the problem. Can you clarify what the redirect issues were, what corrections you made, and what the time sequence was?

[aj113]

So it's not just me then?

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Propools]

Robert Charlton - I don't do the back end work on the site. I'm the Lowly Marketing Director, but I keep up w/ the numbers too. When I talked w/ my back end contractor, he said that there may have been a problem with some of the redirects that were being performed on the server side. As far as specifics to what they are I have no idea. I'll get in touch with him and ask that he participate in this thread. Thanks for your inquiry and I will do my best to find out the specifics. ;)

[Robert Charlton]

...he said that there may have been a problem with some of the redirects that were being performed on the server side.

Then there may have been a problem with Google's ability to index some of your pages.

The Sitemap may or may not have been a good way to correct these. I myself feel that the Sitemap should never be called upon to fix server setup problems.

[Propools]

It wasn't so much that as it was the way the original sitemap was laid out. The orginal map caused redirect issues with Google. So, he changed it to what he thought would work, but now I get VERY few pages indexed. But I think it does still do some redirecting back on the server side to serve up the page with the cart id/session data. Do you think that might be causing the issue?

[jwurunner]

Propools...

When I check Google it shows 349 pages indexed. When I clicked on them they opened fine. This might be a short term Google glitch as mentioned in the other thread....