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We have a PR-5 site it is a business directory, till May, 2008 we had good traffic from google, but then suddenly we lost 80% of the traffic in last three months.
Now, there could be many reasons (google changing its internal algo, we had launched a re-designed site around that time, the new design had lot of extra internal links) this is not all we implemented the following which could have resulted in Google hating us
We are business directory, and we are listing the company names as
www.our-Domain Name/Some-City/company/Some-ID/xyz/
here company is static name in each url, and xyz is company name (if there are two words in the company name, we use a dash in between)
The other part of the problem is that though companies are listed on city name, when you click on the above URL, same data is shown along with MAP (only a MAP is extra in the above pages ,wherein all the other data comes on the regular listing).
By, doing the above, we now have over more Million unique URL (our directory has over One Million names) within our site
Now my questions here (me in tight spot.. any help would be really appreciated)
Option – 1 - We were thinking of removing all the unique URL and changing to www.domain-name/company.aspx?ID=xyz and putting 301 redirect to all old link to this link, so that people coming with old links, would be able to reach the same page through the new URL.
Option -2 Introduce the new URL www.domain-name/company.aspx?ID=xyz and redirect the old links to a Not EXIST page or to home page.
Do you think Google would penalize us further if we use Option-1 ? because the details would be fetched from both the URLs ?
Do you think Option-2 is better ?
Lastly, by doing this would it help in anyway ?
Thanking you in advance for all the help :)
Kumar
They do apply their algorithm fairly consistently, and if your site has ceased to be compliant with Google's guidelines, you need to deal with that issue before taking any risks with your site.
You may well have over one million unique URLs - but do you have unique titles and meta descriptions?
Do you have unique content at those URLs?
Do you link directly to the sites listed in your directory, regardless of their quality - or do you protect your site from bad neighborhood issues?
From your question, I can see many possibilites for problems - none of which involve hate ;)
The current URL format is MUCH more SE frnedly than either one you propose. You need to be sure the advantages of changing URLs (none) outweigh the disadvantages (many) before you proceed.
But first get to the bottom of your problems, else it won't matter!
