Tell me more ×
Webmasters Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for pro webmasters. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 1 down vote favorite

Unfortunately this post isn't about something as concrete as a bug, but it's been driving me nuts. I recently updated my blog's theme and software (I basically rewrote it) from http://old.korokithakis.net/ to http://www.korokithakis.net/.

Yesterday, I noticed all my pages dropping from Google's search results. My Python tutorial used to be 3rd for "learn python" and now it's 30th, if it even appears on the list.

I've allowed robots, all the header tags are in place, titles are the same as they used to be and the URLs that changed have permanent redirects to the new ones (the tutorial URLs haven't changed).

Still, all my pages dropped from the results. What can be having such a huge impact on the rankings?

Thanks.

share|improve this question

migrated from stackoverflow.com Apr 22 '11 at 15:16

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

You might find that it goes back up again after a while – how long since you changed? Sounds like you know what you are doing, and the new site looks nicer and the markup looks fine...

I'd probably change the robots.txt file on the old site to ban crawling to make sure that it's doesn't accidentally get indexed (you linked to it here for instance!), and make sure that you've got it registered on Google Webmaster Tools. It's worth having a sitemap.xml file that's registered in webmaster tools as well.

Weird though – I'd wait a little longer before worrying too much.

share|improve this answer
It's been about two days, so you might be right. You're also right about the old site, I was going to say "I haven't linked to it anywhere" and then I read your next sentence, and thought "oops!". I registered the RSS feed as the sitemap in GWT but I should also create a proper sitemap. All the blog posts are crawlable from the index, but not all the pages. Thanks for your help! – Stavros Korokithakis Apr 22 '11 at 13:34
up vote 0 down vote

You have also changed the URL pattern from /node/id to /post/title. That could be a reason. If that is the case you do not have to worry, your search rankings will go back to normal in few days.

share|improve this answer
I've only changed this for a few pages, though, the tutorial (for example) hasn't changed. However, the US version of Google shows it in its old place. Could this be because I've changed the "Geographic target" field to not target specific countries? – Stavros Korokithakis Apr 23 '11 at 13:04

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.