Ever See Flipped or Redesigned Site Plummet in Rankings?

[AnneE]

I recently reworked a site visually, though leaving most of the original content and linking structure. Google dropped the site in the rankings from about 70 to 700. Have people ever seen a reworked or migrated site plummet in the rankings and if so, how long did it take before it returned to it's prior ranking. The only other change I made was adding SOME Adsense. Could that have caused that big a drop.

[LinkVariety]

Hi,

Yes this is quite possible, though I always aim for a positive impact myself

The easiest way to test this would be to reverse your changes and see what happens.

The other thing is to check whether there were any algo changes at the time your rankings dropped, so for example, if you google "google update 14 october" you will see a lot of results as there was a Panda update on that day.

If there were no algo changes and you think it was your design, then the most likely explanation in your case would be that you increased bounce rates, reduced time on site, user interraction etc. All of these are used as quality metrics in Google.

So, if you go from a presentable site that engages people, to something that looks like an MFA monstrosity people start backing out of, that could adversly affect your position. Usually in that instance your site will start "bouncing" or "dancing" around in the SERP, having a high position every once in a while before dropping again.

Another point is that Mr Cutts (who it is best to ignore for the most part) recently said that Google were going to start analysing pages for intrusive add placements, which of course is another quality measure... prior to reading that I speculated that they may already be doing this...

The best piece of advise I could give you is not to do anything "knee jerk". The more you change, the harder it is to understand what is going on. If you make five changes in one week, and then your position changes then you will have no idea what caused it, so, sit tight for a while and see if it comes back on its own. If not reverse what you did before and see if that helps... check for algo updates as I mentioned.

Its a long hard road Im afraid and there are no shortcuts, just take it slow and work on other sites whilst this issue runs its course.

[Welsh Warrior]

Originally Posted by AnneE

I recently reworked a site visually, though leaving most of the original content and linking structure. Google dropped the site in the rankings from about 70 to 700. Have people ever seen a reworked or migrated site plummet in the rankings and if so, how long did it take before it returned to it's prior ranking. The only other change I made was adding SOME Adsense. Could that have caused that big a drop.

My first thought would be the SEO has been effected somehow. Whilst offpage factors may not have changed you have obviously changed onpage SEO, even if you have retained the content.

Could it be that certain elements are now above your content, marking the original content as less important in google's eyes? Or maybe metadata has changed, or you are using flash etc.

The likelihood is you know what you are doing (sorry for suggesting the obvious) but I would look at what you have done with regards the redesign and see if its effecting your onpage SEO in anyway