Google Community - View Single Post

marg · 04-19-2007, 08:46 PM

Hi all – I’m after a bit of help/advice.

We’re doing a major site redesign…new IA, new look and feel, additional functionality and moving to a new content management system.

Most of our traffic comes from Google, so we really don’t want to do anything that would make us disappear from their search results pages…or loose our rankings.

Some of the major traffic driving pages will remain on their current URLs, but at least 75% of our content won’t. While the main content of a page won’t change, there will be additional functionality and text modules added to the page and the URL will change. We’ll put 301 redirects in place…but I don’t know if Google will recognise these as the same pages or not (given the additional content & functionality), or what the impact will be if Google thinks it’s a different page (other than a loss of ranking for the page).

I’ve heard that sometimes Google will penalise a site if it thinks an established domain has been sold and is being used by a new owner trying to make the most of old rankings. With so many changes coming up, I think it’s possible that Google may come to the conclusion that our site has been taken over by someone else. Any ideas on how to avoid that sort of problem?

Any advice, comments etc would be hugely appreciated!!

04-19-2007, 08:46 PM	#1 (permalink)
marg Noogle Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Brisbane, Australia Posts: 4 Thanks: 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts	Help on site redesign Hi all – I’m after a bit of help/advice. We’re doing a major site redesign…new IA, new look and feel, additional functionality and moving to a new content management system. Most of our traffic comes from Google, so we really don’t want to do anything that would make us disappear from their search results pages…or loose our rankings. Some of the major traffic driving pages will remain on their current URLs, but at least 75% of our content won’t. While the main content of a page won’t change, there will be additional functionality and text modules added to the page and the URL will change. We’ll put 301 redirects in place…but I don’t know if Google will recognise these as the same pages or not (given the additional content & functionality), or what the impact will be if Google thinks it’s a different page (other than a loss of ranking for the page). I’ve heard that sometimes Google will penalise a site if it thinks an established domain has been sold and is being used by a new owner trying to make the most of old rankings. With so many changes coming up, I think it’s possible that Google may come to the conclusion that our site has been taken over by someone else. Any ideas on how to avoid that sort of problem? Any advice, comments etc would be hugely appreciated!!