With adsense in mind, I started a site about (SOMETHING) in Blog format last November. We used pLog as a system and everything was smooth. Google started indexing pages really fast and I reached top three and top ten results rapidly within a couple of months with lots (yes lots) of keywords.
In February, when traffic was higher (around 3000, 5000 visits a day) pLog crashed servers (eat resources) and we had to change to WordPress. What we do was convert all posts from November to February into HTML, and started with WP from zero for new posts.
With pLog, URL structure was: this_is_an_example_page.html
in the conversion into HTML, this was maintained.
Now, with WordPress, URL structure is: /this_is_an_example_page/
Now, (beginning March) since a couple of days ago, the site suddenly dropped from Search Results for main keywords (from #1 for a keyword it went to #300).
As website content I use pasted articles from Wikipedia, with a link to the source, related to the post I was publishing.
From your experience, what is wrong with all of this?
1. The change from pLog to Wordpress?
2. XHTML into HTML conversion of 80% of the pages?
3. The Use of ‘duplicated’ content from Wikipedia?
4. Is something wrong with Google? (i.e. google dance, etc)
The most strange part of this story, is that revenues in adsense haven´t dropped. With the tenth to impressions, I am still within averages.
I don´t know if I can paste my url here. So I will give you more info about my site.
I have 60.100 pages indexed by google, and 33 backlinks.
Also, in the last 2 weeks I sow alternatively PR4 and PR0 on index page. Now, it´s 0
I have heard from a couple of webmasters friends of mine that their sites dropped in rankings the same day my site drop (8th march) and they have totally different websites.
Have you noted something wrong with Google in the past couple of days?
Would love to hear your comments/experiences.
It´s a little difficult for me to write in English, sorry about that.
Neither of those formats are best. Google does not parse keywords in URL's when they are seperated by an underscore. Google does parse the keywords when you use a hyphen.
Quote:
3. The Use of ‘duplicated’ content from Wikipedia?
I use WordPress for my blog and I couldn't be happier. As such, I understand why you'd also feel confident about switching to it.
This being said, why didn't you stay with pLog anyway? If it crashed your current server, fine. Deal with it and pay for a more powerful server, at least, you won't lose your impressive PR ranking at Google.
I'm confident with about 60$US a month, you can get some very serious iron to host your previous pLog blog.
ANOTHER THING:
When you post in your blog, it can go to quite a few article searching sites like Technorati and others. Maybe these sites had links to your -old- structure and when you switched, they all fell into oblivion.
Maybe, just maybe, these links were the reason you had such a high PR ranking in the first place.
What do you think?
__________________
Yes, that's right, I blog at beep.name!
Your hard work will always pay off, especially in blogs!
Google AdSense revenues come when people click the PPC links but for that to happen, your "destination" needs to become interesting... only hard work gets you there.
Keep up your good work!
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Yes, that's right, I blog at beep.name!
Software change
Hard work
Linear Mode
