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Restructuring of internal links caused a bad reaction on Google

by GatoFelix
4 replies
On January 6 of 2010 I decided to do some restructuring for the internal links of my site, then between January 7-15 all seven of the internal urls that I did changes to started to disappear from google results, most of them were on the top 5 for their specific keyword before January 7.
Some characteristics that this urls have with each other are that all of them have the key phrase on their title tag, and part of the new restructuring was that each one gave a backlink to a new URL that have a similar key phrase on the title tag, for example, URL #1 with title tag gucci sunglasses GAVE A BACKLINK TO URL #2 with title tag gucci sunglasses sale. As you can see the second URL had a key phrase modifier compared to the first URL, I did this hoping to have two urls on google results for each key phrase, but instead of this happening, what really happened was that the #1 URL disappeared from the results after it pointing to the new URL which had a similar KP on the title tag. ¿has any one experienced this at any point? any suggestions would be appreciated.
#bad #caused #google #internal #links #reaction #restructuring
  • Profile picture of the author loopline
    Have you checked from multiple Google datacenters? I mean IP addresses from various locations in the country/world?

    I work a day job that has an IP address out of Texas USA while I reside in Indiana USA. Roughly 900 miles difference. I also have an iphone which pulls an IP from elsewhere in Indiana. When I check some of my keywords/urls they show up at different positions in search from different locations in the country. When I use online checker tools, I get yet another different result.

    Assuming its not something that your experiencing locally, then I suppose worst case you could always change it back.

    As to why, it doesn't make any logical sense to me, but algos change all the time. Are the new Urls on the same site or a different site then the origianl ones?
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    • Profile picture of the author GatoFelix
      I checked from different ip addresses and it looks the same, actually the visits to my site, since mid January, have gone from 1600 to 700-800 a day, thats like a 50 percent drop.

      The new urls are all from the same site, and they are all indexed in google.
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  • Profile picture of the author InternetMarketingIQ
    It wasn't broken so you fixed it.

    Did you bother to Check Google Webmaster tools? Did you bother to do any kind of redirection to tell Google about the new URL's?
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    • Profile picture of the author Seattle Mike
      Now I know why I almost never change a page that has good rankings.

      I changed a pr4 site of mine last month. Wanted to add some content to some pages and remove some things. Thought the reason the site wasn't converting was giving away too much content. I had like 10000 words of excellent free content.

      So like a genius I said lets delete those 5 pages. And while I am at it change to a different site url style. Google is the real genius they will find all the new urls, i said.

      Nope they will delete any 404s and you will be lucky if they come back anytime soon.

      That site is now a PR0 anywhere I check. Even with a Yahoo directory backlink.
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