I removed my homepage from the main navigation for a week... and nothing changed

Isaac Grey

Isaac Grey

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I was redesigning my site and accidentally left the homepage link out of the navigation for about a week.


I expected crawling or rankings to be affected, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in traffic or indexing.


It made me wonder how much importance Google actually gives to navigation compared to internal links throughout the site.


Has anyone else tested something similar?
 
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a week is probably too short to see much unless the homepage was the main path to deep pages. nav links matter, but google can still crawl through contextual/internal links, sitemap, and already known urls.
 
Looks like evidence for the Reasonable Surfer Model. I always thought it was just a hypothesis.

It's also possible the crawler just didn't crawl and update your site this week.Please check the indexed version of your pages right now to see if Google is seeing the new version without the homepage link, or still looking at the old one?
 
I've done something similar. I added some pages to the footer block to see if they gain any ranking advantage but nothing happened. The competitors with poor site structure, bad content, and slow loading pages performed better because they have a ton of backlinks. It's almost like Google doesn't care much and ranks pages solely on overall site authority.
 
A week is usually not long enough to see a major impact, especially if your homepage is still being linked from other pages and Google's already familiar with your site. I'd just make sure the navigation stays consistent going forward since it's better for both users and crawlers.
 
A week is not long enough to have a big impact, especially if the page already has plenty of internal links pointing to it. Navigation is important, but Google looks at your overall internal linking structure, not just the menu.
 
Isaac Grey said:
I was redesigning my site and accidentally left the homepage link out of the navigation for about a week.


I expected crawling or rankings to be affected, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in traffic or indexing.


It made me wonder how much importance Google actually gives to navigation compared to internal links throughout the site.


Has anyone else tested something similar?
Click to expand...
removal of the home page from navigation does not affect ranking since google uses all the internal link structur and sitemaps. Also since the home page is usualy very well linked to other pages no significant change can be found through experiment.
 
Isaac Grey said:
I was redesigning my site and accidentally left the homepage link out of the navigation for about a week.


I expected crawling or rankings to be affected, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in traffic or indexing.


It made me wonder how much importance Google actually gives to navigation compared to internal links throughout the site.


Has anyone else tested something similar?
Click to expand...
I have seen the same thing. If the homepage is reachabble via other internal links and is not blocked, a missing navigation link for a short time will usually not have much impact. Internal linking is more important than a single nav link.
 
Isaac Grey said:
I was redesigning my site and accidentally left the homepage link out of the navigation for about a week.


I expected crawling or rankings to be affected, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in traffic or indexing.


It made me wonder how much importance Google actually gives to navigation compared to internal links throughout the site.


Has anyone else tested something similar?
Click to expand...
I have seen cases like this before. If the internal structure of the site is strong then one missing navigation link for a short period of time does not always show noticeable issues.
 
Isaac Grey said:
I was redesigning my site and accidentally left the homepage link out of the navigation for about a week.


I expected crawling or rankings to be affected, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in traffic or indexing.


It made me wonder how much importance Google actually gives to navigation compared to internal links throughout the site.


Has anyone else tested something similar?
Click to expand...
Isaac Grey said:
I was redesigning my site and accidentally left the homepage link out of the navigation for about a week.


I expected crawling or rankings to be affected, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in traffic or indexing.


It made me wonder how much importance Google actually gives to navigation compared to internal links throughout the site.


Has anyone else tested something similar?
Click to expand...
One week is often too short to see an impect.
 
Im not too surprised, by the time a site has been around for a while Google usually already understands its structure and the homepage is often linked from the logo, breadcrumbs, XML sitemap and external backlinks anyway.

That said I wouldnt take it as evidence that navigation doesnt matter, good navigation is still important for users, internal link flow and helping search engines discover deeper pages. A week is also a relatively short period so longer term effects may not have shown up.
 
I have seen similar tests. Google seems to rely more on internal links within content than just the main navigation. As long as the homepage is still accessible through other links then removing it from nav does not not usually make a noiticeable impact in the shorrt term.
 
Google actually gives way more SEO weight to the links inside your content than your main menu, so it makes sense that you didn't see a drop over just one week.
 
Isaac Grey said:
I was redesigning my site and accidentally left the homepage link out of the navigation for about a week.


I expected crawling or rankings to be affected, but I honestly didn't notice any difference in traffic or indexing.


It made me wonder how much importance Google actually gives to navigation compared to internal links throughout the site.


Has anyone else tested something similar?
Click to expand...
The SEO effect is not always instanttaneous. even without the link to the homepage from the website menu, google could still find the pages due to sitemap nd other factors hence there might not be much of a difference that can be observed. nevertheless navigation is still vital for webssite design.
 
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