I totally screwed our rankings by changing URL structure. Help?

Hello search squad!

So, our website is a directory with category pages, and we've ranked first for tonnes of super competitive keywords (think $10 PPC in AdWords). Aiming for greater heights, after reading "best practices", I migrated our URL structure.
Old: mysite.com?search=how-to-rank-first
New: mysite.com/how-to-rank-first

Now, we've dropped from 1st position to the third page for many of our keywords.

Needless to say this is a proper crisis. We employ like a dozen people, all of whom are stressing TF out about it. As I see it, there are 2 options from here: Double down on the change, or revert it? I'll give more context and hopefully one of you seers can guide us.

The migration
I didn't de-index or pull down the old URL's. I just added the new URL's, and used `rel=canonical` to point the old URL's at the new URL's. Our old URL's are still the only ones in our internal link hierarchy.

The timeframe
I did the change around 3 weeks ago. The old style URL's were still appearing on the SERPs until now. The appearance of the new URL's coincided exactly with the the rank plummeting as described.

The complicating factor
At the same time as I changed the URL's, stupidly, we also upgraded the category pages. None of the substantial and unique content was changed. The change was just:
- adding the same panel to all of the category pages explaining how our service works, etc..
- reordering & restyling different sections
- adding some images

So to add to this mess, there's the risk that because this change was done at the same time, Google is confused and isn't treating the new pages the same as the old pages.

The decision

Option 1: Double down on the change
This would mean:
- 301 redirecting all the old URL's to the new
- Replacing references to our old URL's in the internal site hierarchy, with the new URL

Option 2: Revert the change
This would mean:
- 301 redirecting all new URL's to the old URL's
- re-canonicalising the old URL's

Which do I choose? Also, am I missing something? Obviously I'm in a bit of a rush to figure this out, but instead of acting immediately, should I be tracking/measuring something before choosing?

Thanks for reading!

Ok so what you have basically done is tell Google your old URLs no longer exist, all authority and page rank to these URLs is now gone and you need to tell Google that the pages have moved rather than been killed.

If you want to change URL structure (stupid decision if you were already ranking) then go with option 1, otherwise option 2 is ok also but you're going to make google think your website was down for a while so rankings could take a long time to recover.

The first thing you should do when changing URLs is set up a 301 to their new brothers DIRECTLY. Do that NOW. rankings will come back in a few weeks.

- 301 redirecting all the old URL's to the new
- Replacing references to our old URL's in the internal site hierarchy, with the new URL

If you are using wordpress, the redirect might already be there, if not 301 them. After it, wait for google to recrawl the pages. Build some new backlinks to the new urls.

You just lost your Authority of your URLs, you'll get it again by redirecting it(301). So put the 301 of each site to their new URL ASAP!

number_1_spot said:

Now, we've dropped from 1st position to the third page for many of our keywords.

Needless to say this is a proper crisis. We employ like a dozen people, all of whom are stressing TF out about it. As I see it, there are 2 options from here: Double down on the change, or revert it? I'll give more context and hopefully one of you seers can guide us.

The migration
I didn't de-index or pull down the old URL's. I just added the new URL's, and used `rel=canonical` to point the old URL's at the new URL's. Our old URL's are still the only ones in our internal link hierarchy.

Click to expand...

I interested in this, so you duplicate your content and add new URL parameter with same content with old URL?

what is in third page? Old URL or New URL?

and in option 1 you said :

Option 1: Double down on the change
This would mean:
- 301 redirecting all the old URL's to the new
- Replacing references to our old URL's in the internal site hierarchy, with the new URL

this also mean, you never doing 301 redirecting until now, why you use rel=canonical point to old URL instead of just 301 redirect all of old URL to new URL?

If i want to move to new URL structure, i just 301 redirect my old URL to new URL, i don't bother with canonicalized them. Google will know because of 301 "this is the new URL"
you can test 301 with singe URL and see in SERP in a week