Google ranking dropped...

[yasir]

hi,
i have changed some of my URLs to make tham short & friendly. then submitted to google.
after that, my overall ranking is badly affected.
now i am thinking to change my URLs back to the old names. so that i can restore my old ranking. i am confused that either changing back to old urls will be useful or not.
will it restore my old ranking or not?
please help.

Thanks in advance.
my website is www.fruitfuloccasions.co.uk

[Mike Hughes]

It might. It might not. Depends what you've done and how long ago you did it.

How old is your site? When did you make the changes? Did you forward old pages to new ones? Can you give an example of a search that used to be good and now isn't?

Mike

[yasir]

Hi Mike,
Thanks for your assistance.

my site is approx. 1 and half years old.
i make changes 3 days before i.e. 21-05-12
on the same date, i submitted the sitemap and 'Fetch as Google' in google webmaster.
On the next day, after i make changes, my ranking in bing was surprisingly boosted and ranked on first page for most of my keyword. but worst in google.
i redirect my old pages to new ones after 2 days through 301 redirect using .htaccess file
example is:

Fruit Flower
Fruit Flowers
Fruit Bouquet
Fruit Bouquets

these keywords took my site onto the first page and many more like these.

Another thing, when i search for my site in google "site:www.fruitfuloccasions.co.uk"to check that how many pages are indexed into google than it shows only few old pages urls. Not all deleted pages are there in google index. even after i redirect my old urls to new ones.

[Mike Hughes]

Hmm.

If I do a 'site:' search I get about 43 pages which looks about right.

TBH I can't see much about your site that would deserve high rankings. Pagerank is low, anchor text is weak and on page optimisation doesn't look that focused.

What's your most important keyphrase and which page are you expecting to do well?

Mike

[yasir]

Thanks for pointing weak points of my site.
i want these pages to do well in ranking: View All, Sympathy, Everyday Occasions
most important key phrases are: Edible Arrangements, Fruit Flowers, Fruit Bouquets & Fruit Baskets.
although, my site doesn't deserve high ranking but a few days back before i did change my urls. it was in a good position. Fruit Flower, Fruit Flowers, Fruit Bouquet, Fruit Bouquets, Fruit Arrangements, Fruit Baskets...
were on first page.
even at this time on bing, you can check my ranking for edible arrangement
, edible arrangements, fruit flowers, chocolate fruit bouquet, Fruit Arrangements etc
these keywords are on first page.

What are the things you suggest me to do?
can i restore the old urls or continue with the new ones.
Thanks again...

[Chunkford]

If it's only 3 days change them back, then if you still want to change them look into 301 redirecting your old pages to the new ones.

[Mike Hughes]

I suspect the problem is that for two days all the old pages had no redirect so were 404 erroring. Then he put in place the redirects but that was only one day or so ago which won't have been enough time for google to really decide what's going on.

You can change them again if you want to. It'll take a while for google to figure out what's going on anyway.

This sounds to me like too much meddling in stuff that doesn't need to be played with. And if the pages were doing so well, why make the changes in the first place?

Mike

[yasir]

Thanks a lot Chunkford & Mike,
i was also thinking to restore my old urls. i really did a big mistake by changing urls without considering its side effects because someone suggest me to change the urls.

Some of my changed urls are not listed in google site: search.
is this OK?

if i changed my urls to old ones than is it required to redirect my current urls to old ones?

[Mike Hughes]

I wouldn't bother to redirect the temporary urls. All links to them will go so it's best to just present the 404 error page so google knows to drop them from the serps.

Mike

[yasir]

Hi,
i have changed my new urls with the old ones and also submitted my sitemap to the google on 24-May. But google did not crawl my site yet. Is this a normal case or do i need to do something extra. I am so worried about it because i think that may be google suspect my site as a spammer or confusing site.
Can anybody tell me that how much maximum time it could take to recrawl my site.
Many thanks in advance

[guccij]

The answers to your questions can be found with a simple Google search. However, since you clearly prefer to get someone else to do this for you, here you are:

http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en