Hello. Thanks to all the people here who post and share information. I have a site that used to rank #1 on google for my keyword phrase, canadian political cartoons. Just when I thought I had Google all figured out something changed over Christmas and I dropped to the 3rd page. I guess it was because I didn't update the site for a while? Anyway, I did a complete redesign and now the site is completely gone...not even in the top 1000 from what I can see. This has been the case for the last week and a half. Does a redesign put me in the sandbox for months or is this because of the last update that I'm reading about here? Thank You. http://cartoons.diberardo.com/
As you suggested it's more than likely another victum of the sandbox. Personally I've found patience is the only remedy for such wounds.
Did you change the names of all the pages? That would have an affect as would changing titles of pages. Since Google is in such a flux at the moment it is hard to know what to think but changing page name and title will definitely affect SERPS. S
Hi, thanks. Yes I changed the names of pages as well as the titles. I guess I'll wait. This is all so frustrating though.
By changing the names of the files/pages, they basically become new pages to Google, and no longer retain the old pages rank/history. Another issue to consider is inbound links. Did you have many? If so, then those inbound links now all point to pages that no longer exist. So you lost rank points there as well. I would recommend using the old page/file names if possible. Save you a lot of wait time, and you'll get to keep all your inbound links (assuming you use the same path/filename as before). But if that is not possible, you may just have to wait it out until your pages re-surface near the top of the pile (if ever). If you are aware of any inbound links, I would also contact them to announce your URL changes so they can update their links, etc. Good luck!
I've actually kept some of the page names the same. I simply replaced the old new-cartoons.php with the newly designed new-cartoons.php. For other pages I changed the names, but I've left the old pages on the server. So some new, some old...all with new title tags and design. Google is still visiting my site so I'm not banned, I know that much. But there is something really weird going on with Google, the results are wacked. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=canadian+political+cartoon%5C Many of those sites have never been on the first page and are not really what you would expect to find there. As I look at it the first sites description is in Chinese! A