Why did my site loose its Google sitelinks after being updated?

Major_Disaster

Major_Disaster

Major_Disaster

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2 Nov 2007
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488
Hey all,

I had an old rather shoddy site that had managed to pick up Google sitelinks which I was very happy with. I redesigned and massively expanded the site (from a 20 page site to a 300+ one) and noticed that very soon after uploading the new design my sitelinks were gone.

I have waited a couple of months now to see if they came, but there is no sign and I'm wondering why Google is "penalising" my new site when in my eyes it is so much better (in terms of content and SEO)? The search is here

Any ideas or suggestions about how to get my sitelinks back? I did worry that there may be too many internal links on the homepage (with the footer) and big G thought my site may be spammy?
 
Your 20 page site probably had a clearer structure in terms of which pages google turned into your sitelinks.

Eventually google will work out your new site. Or not. ;)

What I've found helps for getting google to use the right pages for sitelinks is an xml sitemap with priority attributes.
 
Thanks for the tip. I gave every page a priority of 0.5, my 6 pages i want as sitelinks 0.9 and the index page 1.0

Would you recommend any changes with regards to on page SEO? As far as i can tell the site is extremely easy to navigate (but im biased!)
 
Sounds about right for your sitemap.

Not sure about rest of it without looking. It's the sort of thing I do for a living though if you want to get in touch.

John
 
inogen said:
What I've found helps for getting google to use the right pages for sitelinks is an xml sitemap with priority attributes.
Click to expand...

It goes a lot further than that: things like navigation and page authority all play much larger roles in getting sitelinks. It also depends on the users search term. For example, it's fairly common to get sitelinks when searching for a company name, as opposed to a broader term.
 
suarve said:
It goes a lot further than that: things like navigation and page authority all play much larger roles in getting sitelinks. It also depends on the users search term. For example, it's fairly common to get sitelinks when searching for a company name, as opposed to a broader term.
Click to expand...

I agree, but hence my question. I (believe I) have good navigation, site structure and content with the new site. However, while navigation of the old site was still good, the content was very basic. Therefore i dont understand why the old site had sitelinks and the new one does not (even when search for the same terms, ie the company name)
 
I made a few changes yesterday (removing / adding in H1, H2 and H3, removing links from the homepage and most notably removing the entire /products/ folder) and like magic i have sitelinks this morning!

Google works in mysterious ways! Can anyone follow the link to confirm the same result?
 
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