I am just wondering if there are any connections between web site design and google ranking? Does web site design have any impact on Google ranking? If I change the design of my web site will its Google positions be changed as well?
If your talking about the whole design it may categorized by the content. A good content can give you better SERP.
I mean if I change my web site design only (not text) will this have an impact on its google positions? Do Google and other search engines take into account web site design when ranking their web sites?
the actual design itself doesn't matter too much. make sure your site architecture stays the same or is redirected properly though.
Yes, internal linking structure, content structure and layout structure can all play a crucial role in SEO, do more research into those 3 topics before building your web documents.
The design it self dose not matter for the search engines it's about the text content which is the only thing that search engines spider can read, so make sure to use ALT tags for images and stay away of flash files... after all keep a good linking structure for all of your inner pages... good luck with your new web design.
ofocurce it will affects rankings, simple exa. if you have website in flash and you are not getting good serp with the content in flash, those content you will redesign in static html pages, than you feel better in serp. I strongly believe not to change website design, if your website performing well on serp's...
Also the site structure, is it easily crawlable by bots? Remember that Search Engine bots and crawlers are somewhat "lazy" that they may leave immediately for some possible reason like poor content, broken links, etc. So a good design must present the important contents immediately to the bots to gather.
bots only see text and not your page design or theme. focus on your content if you want to get more traffic. as from your design, just make the one that suites to your visitors needs, and not yours. why? because they are usually the ones visiting it. you can ask them what would be the best look for your site.