FailuresIndexation and crawling
My site lost 98 percent of its impressions in two days, a week after I redirected thousands of language addresses
In short
The redirected addresses had almost no impressions of their own. Most of the loss was on English pages I never touched.
What I did
On 7 August 2026 one of my own software websites started redirecting every language address that showed English text, instead of a real translation, to its English page. By 18 August, Search Console listed 5,748 addresses as redirects. Between 14 and 16 August, daily impressions fell from about 1,400 to about 30. I compared the same two weeks for all 16 sites in my HQ. The other 15 changed by between minus 22 and plus 277 percent.
Where
One of my own software websites, August to October 2026
What changed
I chose to wait instead of undoing it. Seven weeks later it has not recovered: clicks went from 23 per two weeks to between 1 and 6. The 30 redirected addresses in the 90 day data had only 49 impressions between them. Most of the loss came from two English pages I never changed, which ranked at positions 70 and 85.
Did it work
Too early to tell
What you should do
If you need to redirect or remove thousands of addresses, do it in batches over several weeks and check Search Console after each one.
How long it took
One day to build; seven weeks of waiting so far
A 301 redirect tells Google that a page has moved for good to another address.
Why it matters
The first explanation I was given was that the redirected pages had carried most of the impressions. The data said otherwise: they had almost none. The pages that lost were English pages that were never redirected.
How to check your own site
- In Search Console, watch the Pages report for Page with redirect after any large change.
- Compare impressions page by page before and after, so you know which pages actually lost.
At a glance
ResultToo early to tell
Effort to copyAbout a day
Type of businessAgency and SaaS
SubjectIndexation and crawling
98%of daily impressions lost between 14 and 16 August
5,748addresses turned into redirects
49impressions the redirected addresses had in 90 days
| Status | Running |
|---|
What this changed in how I work
I have not found the cause. The redirects are one candidate. Removals, Manual actions and Security issues are still to be checked, and most of the lost impressions were at positions 70 to 85. I now check which pages lost impressions before I accept any explanation.
End of Lab entry No. 016
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