Effects of major site expansion

[seasalt]

I have an established site that has 10 product pages. On each page there are approximately 20 products - each product has a separate description, price, 'add to cart' button, etc. So, about 200 products over the 10 pages.

I am increasing my product line to around 1,000 items. In order to manage things better, I am switching to a format that will have category pages that will link to individual product pages for each product - therefore increasing my present 10 product pages to 1,000 pages.

1. How does Google handle such a sudden increase in pages from an established site?

2. I need to modify my homepage to accommodate the changes - how sensitive is Google to homepage changes?

[Lexur]

1. How does Google handle such a sudden increase in pages from an established site?

Badly. Very badly. You should start adding new products in a reasonable lapse of time, lets say ten every day.

I need to modify my homepage to accommodate the changes - how sensitive is Google to homepage changes?

I don't think Google cares about "homepage change" but about title, keywords in the text, number of links and so on. If you suddenly increases the number of sections in your site, and then the number of links, the PageRank flux will change for sure, and then the SERPs.

And, of course, it's just a theory. Only Google knows. :)

[buckworks]

Expect some ranking fluctuations for the simple reason that your existing Page Rank will be spread among a thousand pages instead of focused on ten pages. Balance that change (at least partly) by investing some energy into quality link development.

That said, the key factor to watch is total traffic, rather than any particular ranking. If the new pages are well structured and text rich, there's a good chance you could pick up enough new traffic from long tail searches to compensate for any fluctuations in existing rankings.