Always add. Never subtract. (An expensive lesson)

[NIL8]

I've been in the development game since the early part of the decade. When I first got started, I used a 1.0 release of a CMS along with a template I tweaked for my own use. I used the same CMS/template on three different sites; all of which were identical in name and content except that each one referred to a different U.S. state.

After I added the content/images, I left them alone. Each of these sites went straight to the top of every major search engine and remained there for almost a decade.

Every now and then I would add more pages/content/images. I would never remove old content - that is, until a couple of weeks ago.

About two weeks ago, I decided to make some very minor changes to the front page of each site. I removed a couple of words and removed/renamed some images. I purposely didn't update the template or the CMS, so that it wouldn't effect my search engine ranking. Unfortunately, it didn't matter.

The next day I was knocked off the front page of the search engines. I waited a while to see if the sites would settle back into their spots, but I don't think it's going to happen.

A couple of things I noticed... The more aggressive the competitors, the more damage to page rank. Competitors have always tried to copy my domain name in their content text/meta/key words, etc. Once I made the changes to my sites, these competitors were quickly ranked in my position. One of my sites had very little aggressive competition and it has recovered pretty well.

Also, I've changed images before, but usually just change the image and keep the file name the same. This time I didn't, for what ever reason, and it ruined a very profitable business.

I figured I'd mention this to all it might pertain. Be careful! You may add content, but you should never subtract from it or the consequences could be dire.

[chrislomax]

An interesting piece of research could be if Google actually takes the top sites content into account when it ranks other sites? You say your site has been there for a decade, I wonder if it takes how you did your site as a "defacto" for any new sites coming in?

I know it could only be 1 of a 1000 factors but I wonder if this is true.

For example, I wonder if it uses context etc from Wikipedia and such to rank other sites around it. i.e. takes content and their context to rank them? So its not only down to links and content but how you use that content in relation to other sites?

In this intance, maybe you became the defacto and you went against your own rules. Does that make sense or even sound feasible?

[NIL8 → chrislomax]

Very interesting concept. That would definitely be worth looking into. It would be very valuable to consider this before changing old content.