Google deindexed my landing page after GSC warning

[ichthyous]

I recently decided to rearrange some content on my site which shortened the landing page url by one level...i.e. /images/x/y/z/ became /images/y/z/. I changed the canonicals and updated every last inbound link under my own control to the new shorter url.

Within about a week I got a warning from Google search console that Google had selected the old url as the canonical, but then proceeded to index almost all the new URLs. However, traffic to one of the URLs (by far the most important with the most traffic) has dropped 91% in the last week as a result. I double checked everything...canonicals correct, most of the new URLs in the index, 301 redirects in place and working.

The other two affected URLs have increased in traffic considerably. Has anyone else had experience with losing ranking due to this type of situation, and did it recover? I just checked in USA in three states and I ranked #1 for the term in all locations, so this isn't adding up.

[not2easy]

GSC is not always offering real time evaluations. It can take time for them to change their cached results. In that interim - until they have figured it out - you may see confusing signals.

If the changes are an improvement for the UX, don't follow the temptation to revert the URLs. Follow your common sense and check back about GSC signals after they have had time to settle. I would say a week minimum, but have seen it take more like two weeks to digest changes.

[ichthyous]

@not2eaay the issue that concerns me is the 91% drop in traffic to one of the changed urls. The other two have seen large increases, but from a much smaller amount of traffic before the change. 91% drop indicates an issue even though the pages are indexed. And I was shocked to see the URL in question in the #1 slot in three searches. I will attempt it with a different IP in various countries. This is a location term regarding a location outside of my home country...I was ranking at the top in that country too

[aristotle]

which shortened the landing page url by one level

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "the landing page url". Where are these landing visitors coming from?

[ichthyous]

It's just a URL, but for a very popular content subsection of my site. I removed the content from the previous parent section and now the 1st sublevel is the parent...in other words everything got moved up one level. Perhaps this will end up being a non-issue since I seem to be ranking #1 when i check. So where did 91% of visits to this url go in the last week?