Webmaster Tools Impressions - Site Redesign

[WSteven]

Since relaunching our site (with a new url structure), webmaster tools impressions have dropped dramatically.

At the same time, actual rankings seem to be rising and Analytics is showing little to no loss of organic traffic.

Does webmaster tools take a while to figure out the new URLs (I did resubmit the sitemap however it still seems to be tracking the old ones) and if yes how long?

[RyanPurkey]

If you made a domain change that could be an even bigger part of it and if so, you'll want to use the Change of Address tool in GWT to help clear that up. Also, did you use 301 redirects to point the old URLs to the new?

My guess is that you did all the steps though and didn't have a domain name change since actual rankings are increasing and you haven't experienced a loss in organic traffic. It's likely old data in GWT.  You might try looking at dates solely from after the relaunch to make sure you're just tracking those new pages.

One last thought is that you can try pinging the new site with a tool like 247pinger.com or bulkping.com. What kind of timeline are you talking about here?

[WSteven]

This post is deleted!

[WSteven]

Thanks Ryan!

You are correct in assuming that our domain name has not changed.

We did 301 redirect as many URLs aas we possibly could (lots and lots) although we had some minor issued with getting some of them to work properly at the beginning.

When I search our search terms Google is showing the new URLs. I can't search them all but I have searched enough to feel pretty confident that the switch has gone mostly according to plan.

Webmaster tools however, is clinging to the old data like old bubble gum to the bottom of my shoe. The change occured on 3/12 and Webmaster Tools shows nary a sign of figuring that out.

It's a bit odd...

[RyanPurkey]

Ya. My guess is old data. I'd just make sure to delete the old sitemaps from GWT, and double check to see that the new ones are all that's in there. You can also run the Fetch and Render tool to spot check some of the primary new pages.  At least all is well in the results... Cheers!

[DonnaDuncan]

I'm with Ryan - old data. I'm theorizing here, but think it has to do with the way Google reports queries. They say they report the top 2000 queries that resulted in pages from your site being displayed in results over the reporting time period which is, by default, 30 days. They're reporting the top 2000 query-page-result combinations. Since the redesign, you've had both old and new pages displaying in results so the number of query-page-result combinations could have as much as doubled, depending on how many of the new pages are indexed.

It could take a while before you see impressions start to rise again but I think it's a reporting problem and not a visibility one. My two cents.