Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I look after an online shop that has over 6000 pages.
About 2 months ago I decided to move all the pages from the store in to the root directory, not sure if that was a mistake or not. I had a brain wave that google would rank my pages higher if they were in the root directory instead of the next level down.
So for instance each store url now became http://www.example.com/some_product_page.html instead of http://www.example.com/store/some_product_page.html. This happened for over 6000 pages. Same page same prodcuts just a slightly different url.
All my original Google sitelinks appeared to be in the root directory, I had none from the store folder. So I thought by moving the pages I would get sitelinks from the my store(now in the root directory), which would have been more helpful to the end user.
I was devastated to see my original sitelinks disappear and now I am left with none. Will they come back and does anyone know how long it will take. My traffic has took a big hit. I set up redirects eventually in the last week becuase of the amount of pages was not sure how to do it in bulk. I think I got most of them redirected now.
Anybody any ideas? or tips?
Regards,
Nigel
[edited by: tedster at 6:11 pm (utc) on April 8, 2009]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]
Sitelinks are assigned by a complex algorithm that depends on many factors. So I can understand that a lot of url changes for your site might disrupt things.
I'd say make sure your 301 redirects are technically accurate and don't change anything more about the urls structure. Let Google sort it out and keep an eye on your Webmaster Tools account for any information you can use.
Keep checking through the redirects, trying to make sure there all good. I know it is possibly an impossible question to answer, but do you think the sitelinks will come back and if they do, what timescales, weeks, months or years?
Regards,
Nigel
