I moved my site to WordPress two weeks ago, which resulted in new Permalink titles for my blog entries. A redirect took care of forwarding the old addresses.

At the same time, I submitted my new sitemap to Google through my webmaster account there.

The new urls never appeared in Google, but my site maintained its page rank and my searches were unaffected.

Today the site has disappeared from Google. My Top 10 searches and PR are all gone.

I'm a bit concerned. Is this typical, and can I expect my site to regain its search status?

Here's my sitemap (displays better using page source):
http://dwarfurl.com/8f402

Thanks.

A redirect took care of forwarding the old addresses.

301 or 302?

301, Chris. It's been working fine:

# Redirect PluggedOut to WordPress
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*&)?entryid=([0-9]+)(&.*)?$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^$ /?p=%2 [R=301,L]

WordPress then creates the Permalink:

# WordPress permalinks
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

I'm guessing you took the old pages down, right?

Each of them had all kinds of navigation links. People tend to get blinded by "get more backlinkz" and forget that internal links are valuable, too. If you had hundreds of internal links from well ranked pages, all pointing to the main pages in your site, all with anchor text describing those pages (probably with some keywords that sent you a fair amount of traffic) - all those links disappear with the pages that housed them. The 301 redirects tell search engines to transfer the "weight" behind Page A to Page B, but it takes a while.

I'm concerned that my site has suddenly disappeared entirely from Google Search.

Meanwhile, it's been two weeks since I uploaded the new sitemap, and Google still has not indexed the site.

What's confusing is the old urls are still out there on Google. They just are no longer linked to search results that have been bringing visitors to my site.

The 301 redirects tell search engines to transfer the "weight" behind Page A to Page B, but it takes a while.

I detect a shred of optimism from your comment. How long do you mean by "a while"?

Thanks.

About six months, based on Chris Hirst's estimation.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

About six months, based on Chris Hirst's estimation.

What the heck? I have a well-established site, with a 301 redirect in place, and Google will treat it like a brand new site?

Well, if you were Google, how would you know whether it's an established site refactoring itself, or having gone down and been replaced by an entirely new one?

Their algorithm works mainly from link analysis. It's honestly not meant to reward old ("established") sites, or punish new ones. That just happens, it's an emergent property of the math. When the pages went off the air, a lot of internal links vanished, and the total volume of links (if there's a way to consider their numbers and value) was cut drastically. In turn, this hurt not only your rank, but Google's estimation of your site's overall value to the web. Which causes them to crawl you less often, and at less depth. Which slows down the process of fixing it, from Google's end (since it's not broken on your end).

I'm not saying Google is morally right, but that's how the math works.

Well, if you were Google, how would you know whether it's an established site refactoring itself, or having gone down and been replaced by an entirely new one?

What you're describing is a system crafted entirely to serve Google, and not Web users or site developers.

Regardless, if it took two weeks for Google to suddenly forget my "old" site existed, why did it not find the new links present in the site and in the sitemap I submitted?

For that matter, what good is a Google Webmaster account if Google ignores my sitemaps?

Your entire answer is here;

What's confusing is the old urls are still out there on Google. They just are no longer linked to search results that have been bringing visitors to my site.

READ post #4 again John is bang on the mark. If you take down ALL existing pages and replace them IT IS A BRAND NEW SITE so it will get treated as one.

The search engines now have to start all over again from your "home" page and discover all the new locations and entry points, Any links to pages other than the "home" page are gone, and have to be re-evaluated. Sitemaps mean nothing at all. The existing, trusted links on your own site are gone, now the new ones have to be analysed and trusted once more, and it takes time. The redirects will lessen the time it takes, so you should start to see it happening after 4 - 6 weeks maybe less.
Monitor the crawler activity, once bots start requesting the new URIs on a regular basis it will be a matter of days to when the new URIs take over in the SERP

What you're describing is a system crafted entirely to serve Google, and not Web users or site developers.

Of course, it's google's index and system, so it's their right to protect it's integrity in any way they wish to. The "Bait and Switch" technique is not a new concept by any means.

The site hasn't suddenly disappeared, it's taken two weeks to drop out. The fact that it apparently disappeared on one particular day for you, is merely the product of multiple datacentres and a continuous synchronising process. Somewhere in the world the new pages are probably already indexed and showing, Just these areas have no idea you or your site exists so are not looking for it.

sitemaps are of zero use for SERPs. They do not "speed up" reindexing after site structural changes.
Time and patience is the only answer.
I moved one of my sites from Wordpress to my own bespoke system. Now bear in mind it had only been up for a month or so before the move, so had very few links pointing to it, but it's now three months further on and many of the original URIs are still there, hanging about in the index, and I fully expect them still to be there in the middle of next year, unless whatever links the crawlers found to them get updated or taken down.

we switched are sites to more seo friendly urls, we noticed a severe drop in traffic and search engine rankings for about a month maybe two. I would suggest, spend less time worrying and just go about your business. Build links, create content, and overall build a better site than you had before. Afterall, you switched for a reason

Originally Posted by kturet

What you're describing is a system crafted entirely to serve Google, and not Web users or site developers.

I'm not sure how that would be true? Google's interests are served by having a reputation for delivering the best answers to user's questions. A mutual interest being leveraged is a good thing. I'll agree that web site developers can be left out in the cold, but, it's a long, open debate on whether that's necessarily a bad thing, and, if so, how much?

Originally Posted by kturet

For that matter, what good is a Google Webmaster account if Google ignores my sitemaps?

I'm sure you can benefit from the information that's made available to you inside your webmaster account, even if Google doesn't jump when you snap your fingers. Keep in mind there are billions of web sites on the internet, and all of them want special treatment from Google.

I appreciate all of the information provided here.

While I'm waiting for the GoogleBot, I'd like to mention some concerns with the new format.

My sitemap, implementing the WordPress "friendly urls" Avitus mentioned, looks fine. However, I noticed yesterday the Web Crawl in Google Webmaster Tools returns 5,562 404 errors.

These errors appear to be a freakish assortment of bad urls that may have been generated by my old blog, and more troubling urls that append WordPress default urls (?p=) to WordPress-friendly urls.

Those urls appear in this format:
http://www.mysite.com/2006/07/12/news-for-today/?p=18

I would expect the WordPress permalink structure to prevent these sorts of errors. Is there anything I can do on my end to prevent them?

Run over your site with Xenu's Link Sleuth to see if they are being generated by your site, if they are, fix it. It will probably some links that are formed as document relative (href="?p=[id]") URIs somewhere.
If they are not on your pages, don't bother about it because you can't change it. It is probably the bots doing the querystring parameter testing that goes off. Let it all settle down, provided they 404 out they aren't really creating a problem.

Chris, thanks for the Link Sleuth recommendation. It's a very useful tool. And yes, it helped me locate a bunch of document-relative errors, as well as numerous unwanted and otherwise invisible line breaks that I blame on the WordPress "text" editor.

Meanwhile, Google has found about a dozen of the new urls, so I'm slightly encouraged.

Monitor the crawler activity, once bots start requesting the new URIs on a regular basis it will be a matter of days to when the new URIs take over in the SERP

This is interesting. How would I monitor the crawler activity?

This is interesting. How would I monitor the crawler activity

Site logs analysis.

You may have Awstats, Analog or Webalizer available on your hosting, or you could use FunnelWeb to give traffic reports form the site logs.

There's a new plugin, too, called wp-visitors, that might be useful. I haven't installed it myself - it's just a log parser, showing the most recent X visitors. Still, it might be helpful?