Drop in Google, undo 301 redirection

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Hi
A few weeks ago we've experienced a sudden drop in our Google rankings. On Feb 14th we did a redirect from example.de to example.com/de and on Feb 18th we did a redirect from .com to .com/it. Organic search didn’t drop and everything seemed stable after the 301 redirection. On the 19th of April we moved the site from http to https. Soon after this we experienced an increase in page visitors, which remained stable for a few months until the 26th of June.
On the 26th of June we had a drop on all the domains:
example.com
example.fr
example.es
example.nl
example.com/de
example.com/it
So, not only the redirected domains dropped but all of the domains. This drop remained stable for the last few weeks. Until now we are not sure which caused this drop but we are thinking about undoing/removing the redirected domains and change example.com/de back into example.de and example.com/it into example.net but are afraid that this might hurt our ranking again.
Hopefully someone can tell us what caused the drop? And if undoing/removing the 301 redirected domains can recover the drop, only makes it worse or will have no effect on our rankings?
Thank you in advance for helping us out
#search engine optimization #301 #drop #google #redirection #undo
  • [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Could be but we'll never know right?
  • You did a redirect from a .de to a.com? And you have no idea why you would drop?

    Of course it would affect them, both ways.

    People play around with 301 because they heard a guy who knew a guy, and by the time it got to you...you thought it was some miracle drug.

    301 has it's well intended, designed uses.

    Anything else is nonsense-SEO.

    Paul
    • [1] reply
    • Thanks Paul

      We've expected a minor drop but we wouldn't think this would be this big and across all the domains.
      But what do you think about removing the 301? Would this cause another drop or could the drop be undone by removing the 301?
  • In the first place you didn't even know what's the real use of 301 redirect.
    Why we use 301 redirect? First thing in mind before we implement.
    • [1] reply
    • Hi Kylie,
      Of course we know why we've done the 301, we had to because of some issues with the example.de and example.it domains. Due to these issues, our overall traffic dropped with 16% in March in comparison to February, traffic in example.de even dropped with 70%. We've chosen to change those two domains into example.com/de and example.com/it. We wanted to minimize the damage of this change and that's why we used a 301. At first it seemed to work because we had an increase of 24% of overall traffic in the first two months, even an increase of 200% in the example.de (almost back to the old level of visitors). After this (June 26th) we dropped with 20% across all the domains. This means we're back where we were before we did the redirect but at this moment we have visitors across all the domains. So, the German domain didn't fall to original level of March but we've lost visitors on all domains. Since the German domain is very important to us the current situation is better than it was before but we don't understand why the other domains are dropping.
  • Re: "So, not only the redirected domains dropped but all of the domains"

    thats a bad indicator, i think they got you...

    if this stays that way you can try a double 301 = a dropped site goes to authority site
    and buffers the drop (like for example the public wordpress site or others like that)

    then from that site you redirect to NEW domain after a few days. Chance of success:
    about 60-70%, sometimes 80%

    but that also changes frequently, you have to do your own tests
    • [1] reply
    • Oke thank but we haven't had any penalties and the webmasters tool is showing no issues
      • [1] reply
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    Drop in Google, undo 301 redirection

    Hi A few weeks ago we've experienced a sudden drop in our Google rankings. On Feb 14th we did a redirect from example.de to example.com/de and on Feb 18th we did a redirect from .com to .com/it. Organic search didn’t drop and everything seemed stable after the 301 redirection. On the 19th of April we moved the site from http to https. Soon after this we experienced an increase in page visitors, which remained stable for a few months until the 26th of June. On the 26th of June we had a drop on all the domains: