Google's John Mueller responded to a question about the impact of expanding a website's size to 10 times its original size. Mueller's answer is worth considering for anyone considering significantly expanding their site, because Google will see it as a whole new website, prompting a re-evaluation.
The impact of expanding your site
One reason for a site migration is the consolidation of two websites into one, which can make the site larger. Another reason for the increase in size is the addition of a large number of new products.
This is a question asked on the SEO Office Hours podcast:
“If you were to expand your product portfolio significantly, say from 10,000 to 100,000 products, how would that impact your SEO performance?”
It should be pointed out that the issue is about the site expanding tenfold.
Mueller's answer:
“I don't think we need to look for any weird explanations. When you expand your website significantly, in this case by a factor of 10, it changes your website significantly across the board. By definition, the old website is only 10% of the new website. So it's only natural to expect search engines to re-evaluate how they display your website. After all, it is essentially a new website.
It's good to be strategic about changes like this. I wouldn't see this primarily as an SEO issue.”
Reassess how Google sees your website
Mueller said this isn't primarily an SEO issue, but most SEOs would likely disagree because anything that affects how search engines view your site is an SEO issue. Was Mueller trying to say that this should be seen as a strategic issue?
Either way, John Mueller’s response means that if you grow your site too quickly, it could cause Google to re-evaluate your site since it’s essentially a whole new website, which could be an undesirable scenario.
Mueller didn't say how long the reassessment would take, but has suggested in the past that it could take several months. Things may have changed, but here's what Mueller said four years ago about how long a site-wide evaluation would take:
“It takes a lot of time to understand how a website relates to the rest of the internet.
… And it may take months, half a year, or even more than half a year to notice a significant difference in the overall quality of your site.”
The fact that any sudden increase in content will trigger a site-wide evaluation means that the best way to approach content growth is to do it in stages, so this is something to consider.
Listen to the Google SEO Office Hours podcast at about the 4:24 minute mark.
Featured Image: Shutterstock/ShotPrime Studio
