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A few weeks ago I was adding some code to my sites htaccess file. Well, the new code did not do what it was supposed to. So I uploaded a backup copy of my htaaccess file and overwrote the one I had changed.
But, I uploaded the wrong file. The backup file that I uploaded did not contain the code that the site map generator needed to run.
A couple of weeks go by. So I'am looking through my google webmaster tools and see an error on the site map. The last time the site map had been downloaded by google was about 2 weeks ago.
Ok, so I go into the site map generator logs and see its having problems making the site map ever night.
Then everything falls in together. The htaccess file is checked, and sure enough, the code for the site map is missing. So I insert the code that the site map generator needs to run. Two days later I check my google webmaster tools and the site map was downloaded just fine.
Here is the problem. While the site map generator was down, google delisted a lot of my pages. Oh, only about 150,000 - 160,000 of them.
Not only were that many pages delisted, but my forum has lost 5% - 8% of its traffic and page views have dropped about 100,000 as compared to 30 days ago.
Let this be a lesson - Google likes site maps. Take the site map away and google gets mad.
For those of you that might be wondering - I used the site: command and my google webmaster tools to figure out about how many pages I lost. At one time I had around 290,000 pages listed with google - that was right before the site map problem. After the site map was down for about 2 weeks, that number went to 140,000 indexed pages. Google webmaster tools shows you how many URLs were submitted by the site map and how many of those URLs have been indexed. When the site map was downloaded for the first time in about 2 weeks. Google reset the total number of site map URLs indexed back to 0.
Last edited by ~kev~; 04-03-2009 at 10:07 AM..
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