Incomplete Redirect for Domain Migration?
-
One year ago we migrated domain "X" to domain "Y". We did the proper redirects and used Google Search Console. Everything was done by the book. Now when we enter "Site: X" in Google about 650 results listing the old domain still come up. When clicked these redirect to the new domain.
My SEO says that the old domain should not be indexed by Google, that these pages with the old domain should not appear. Is this in fact an incomplete domain migration?
Our search traffic dropped considerably when we migrated the domain a year ago. My SEO thinks this may explain the drop.
Thanks,
Alan -
Alan,
Spot checking, I looked at a few of your redirected old domain pages which are still showing up in the index. Here are my thoughts:
- For the ones which are redirected properly, you might be experiencing a ranking dip because the old domain name contained keywords better matching search terms. for example, if a search contains "office" or "space", it could be that your old domain was perceived by Google as a stronger match. Although Google doesn't place as much weight on exact or partial match domain names as was once the case, it is still a ranking factor, from my recent experience.
- URLs such as http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods seem to be properly redirected. From what I can tell, the redirects look fine.
- Other URLs such as http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/Chelsea are being redirected to a non-existent page, with a 404 error. Probably because you are using a pattern redirect which is preserving the requested file path. For any of these which previously had rank equity, I would put some effort into redirecting to some relevant existing page.
- I do see that your old URLs here http, and the new ones were https. The redirects are working fine, but you might want to check that when you did the change of address, it was on the http version of the old property (to the new domain). Even though we're not supposed to use change of address to go from http to https migrations, it is still necessary to change the address from the specific version of the old property. So, if you previously had both http and https versions of your old property, you want to make sure you've done the change of address tool for the http one.
-
i will update you tomorrow but I am thinking algorithm index errors
-
Hi Tom:
The old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com
The new domain is: https://www.metro-manhattan.com/
The google search:
site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com
Returns 794 results for the old pages. This does not seem normal.
Any ideas?
-
A year ago you changed domains and your old domain still shows up in Google?
If you show me the domains I can tell you what is happening but you
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049?hl=en&ref_topic=6033084
- https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/make-or-break-your-site-migration
- https://searchengineland.com/site-migration-seo-checklist-dont-lose-traffic-286880
- https://www.hobo-web.co.uk/how-to-change-domain-names-keep-your-rankings-in-google/
Map all changed URLs from old to new
You should have a spreadsheet that lists every old URL and every new URL.
**QUOTE: **“if you really want to move your website then you should try to [use] 301 redirects” John Mueller, Google
301 Redirects are an incredibly important and often overlooked area of search engine optimisation. Properly implemented 301 Redirects are THE cornerstone SEO consideration in any website migration project.
QUOTE: “If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, we recommend that you use a server-side 301 redirect. This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page.” Google, 2018
If you fail to implement proper redirects when migrating a website from one domain to another you will instantly lose any traffic to your website you currently enjoy, with new visitors often greeted by the dreaded 404 page, and in 2019, soft-404s applied by Google if they do not trust the redirect in a way that helps visitors.
Tom
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Domains and Domain Authority
Looking for some advice 🙂 I have a domain that has been registered since 1999 and currently hosts my website - the problem is that my business has moved in a different direction and my URL is no longer associated with my main product offering. For example in the past I was xyzgarden.com however now something like xyzhomedecor.com is much more appropriate. How should I handle this so that I am not at a disadvantage for SEO. thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Going from 302 redirect to 301 redirect weeks after changing URL structure
I made a small change on an ecommerce site that had big impacts I didn't consider... About six weeks ago in an effort to clean up one of many SEO-related problems on an ecommerce site, I had a developer rewrite the URLs to replace underscores with hyphens and redirect all pages throughout the site to that page with the new URL structure. We didn't immediately update our sitemap to reflect the changes (bad!) and I just discovered all the redirects are 302s... Since these changes, most of the pages have a page authority of 1 and we have dropped several spots in organic search. If we were to setup 301 redirects for the pages that we changed the URL structure would there be any changes in organic search placement and page authority or is it too late?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16116990439410 -
Should I redirect my Google Update Effected Domain to brand new Domain?
Hey Moz experts, I had a domain which was really doing better but after the Humming Bird update my traffic was decreased up to 90%. There are plenty of posts on my existing blog, Now what should I do? I mean should I redirect it to a brand new domain or Copy all the posts to a brand new domain and delete my existing domain? Note that the Old domain has PR1, DA 19 and PA 30.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imran20780 -
301 Redirect htaccess
Hi Guys, I have a website that has plenty of links with parameters. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UrbanMark
http://www.domainname.co.uk/index.php?app=ecom&ns=catshow&ref=Brandname-Golf-Shorts&sid=201v04gxs2hlozv161tfo43qk98583el I want to place a wildcard redirect on the .htaccess but don't know what exactly code for this. Ideally I want the URLs above to be: http://www.domainname.co.uk/Category/Brandname-Golf-Shorts Any help pls. Thanks,
Brucz0 -
Traffic down after site migration
Hi! I've been working on a campaign for http://www.alwayshobbies.com/, which has seen a 35% in drop in traffic since changing ecommerce platforms. It's now been two months, but there is no sign of recovery. We are in the middle of cleaning up the link profile as part of a resubmission request, but that has been ongoing since before the migration. A lot of redirects were needed after 10k 404s appeared in Webmaster Tools after the new launch, but these have been reduced to around 500. We've been pretty thorough here, but I thought it would be worth checking in case there's something we've missed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Create a link or redirect?
We have 60 demo movie pages on our site. We no longer link to these movie pages internally, because they are outdated; however, a lot of our partner companies are still linking to these pages. Some of these pages will have 10-15 linking root domains and a page authority of 30+... so pretty decent authority. These pages only include a movie on the pages, no links. I am trying to pass some of the link juice from these pages to other pages on our site. I am wondering if I should: A)Include transcripts on these pages, then link back to our current product page or solution pages? B)Set up redirects from these pages to a product or solution page? C)Set up a redirect to our homepage? Any advice? Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Domain Choise
Hello, Im working a e-commerce shop, and my question is about choosing the domain. Presently the website is not performing good with the domain www.casaobjecto.com, that is the brand name of the shop. Now I have made my analysis about keywords and conclude that it would be very interesting to have a domain name with the main keyword that im targeting. The domain is available. If I choose the maintain the www.casaobjecto.com as main domain and the other keyword domain pointing to that site, whats the influence that can take in the keyword im looking for? Or should I replace the target keyword domain (becomes the main domain) by the brand domain name? Whats the best choice? Tks in advance, Pedro M Pereira
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Quoestion about 301 redirect
Hey, I have interesting questions regardin 301 redirect (At least I think it's Interesting:) ) So i have this websites that compares different lenders, url below 🙂 If you go to the homepage then the first thing you see is different loan amounts in 50-99 euro range. Also you can check out different loan amounts like 100-149€, 150-199€, 200-249€ and so on. For now i have used 301 redirect and Noindex and Nofollow for all the different "loan amounts" urls. Examples below etc Is it a good idea to use 301 on all such pages to point to the homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TauriU0