Is it normal for a page to spike and disappear after a redesign?

[osaka73]

I redesigned one specific page out of thousands on my site.  I believe I made it better, giving it more content, and a better organized design.  It spiked for a day, and then it dropped back to oblivion.  I don't know where it is with Google right now.

From what I've read, it takes Google some time to understand the new design, so this is perhaps, normal.  But it still makes me uncomfortable.

Is there anything I can do in the meantime to help this redesigned page?  Or if I should just leave it alone for a while, how long should I have to wait to let it sink in with Google?

[evolvingSEO]

Hi There

It's tough to give specifics without seeing the exact page and site. But in general, this is something I have seen sometimes. It's possible Google re-ranked the newer page highly to test for user metrics like click-through-rate, dwell time and "pogosticking" - maybe the user metrics didn't go so well so they dropped it back down.

Here's the question too - it's important to note that if Google actually crawled and re-cached the page with the new design when re-ranking. I would recommend always checking the cache date so you can tie the ranking timing to which version of the page they are ranking.

Also, another thought - when you updated the page, did you give it a social push and/or did it get lots of traffic from other sources too? Sometimes I've seen Google rank a page higher while it's getting social attention and then drop it back down after the social attention goes away.