How to use Google search console's 'Name change' tool?
-
Hi There,
I'm having trouble performing a 'Name change' for a new website (rebrand and domain change) in Google Search console.
Because the 301 redirects are in place (a requirement of the name change tool), Google can no longer verify the site, which means I can't complete the name change?
To me, step two (301 redirect) conflicts with step there (site verification) - or is there a way to perform a 301 redirect and have the tool verify the old site?
Any pointers in the right direction would be much appreciated.
Cheers
Ben
-
Your answer is confusing sorry.
If you're not supposed to add the old site's verification to your new site, how does anyone complete the Name Change Tool?
- Step 2 of the tool requires 301 redirects be in place before you can move on
- Step 3 of the tool requires you verify the old site
Obviously, if step 2 is working, then step 3 will always fail.
How do you complete the name change tool?
-
Don't try to edit old one. Let read old version to Google. You need to add new property. You don't need to worry about old property. Due to 301, Google auto ignore your old version.
-
Got this working.
What's not immediately obvious, is that you're allowed to use one site's verification on another.
So you have to copy the old site's verification over to the new site so that your new site is running both verifications.
Then when you run the tool, verification of the old site works.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
My pages are being crawled, but not indexed according to Search Console
According to Google Search Console, my pages are being crawled by not indexed. We use Shopify and about two weeks ago I selected that Traffic from all our domains redirects to our primary domain. So everything from www.url.com and https://url.com and so on, would all redirect to one url. Have added an attached image from Search Console. 6fzEQg8
Technical SEO | | HariOmHemp0 -
How do I "undo" or remove a Google Search Console change of address?
I have a client that set a change of address in Google Search Console where they informed Google that their preferred domain was a subdomain, and now they want Google to also consider their base domain (without the change of address). How do I get the change of address in Google search console removed?
Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng0 -
Will a blog post about a collection of useful tools and web resources for a specific niche being seen as negative by google for too many links?
SEO newbie here, I'm thinking about creating a blog post about a collection of useful tools and web resources for my specific niche. It'd be 300 links or more, but with comments, and categorized nicely. It'd be a useful resource for my target audience to bookmark, and share. Will google see this as a negative? If so, what's the best way to do such a blog post? Thanks
Technical SEO | | ericzou0 -
Weird problems with google's rich snippet markup
Once upon a time, our site was ranking well and had all the markups showing up in the results. We than lost some of our rankings due to dropped links and not so well kept maintenance. Now, we are gaining up the rankings again, but the markups don't show up in the organic search results. When we Google site:oursite.com, the markups show up, but not in the organic search. There are no manual actions against our site. any idea why this would happen?
Technical SEO | | s-s0 -
Disallow: /search/ in robots but soft 404s are still showing in GWT and Google search?
Hi guys, I've already added the following syntax in robots.txt to prevent search engines in crawling dynamic pages produce by my website's search feature: Disallow: /search/. But soft 404s are still showing in Google Webmaster Tools. Do I need to wait(it's been almost a week since I've added the following syntax in my robots.txt)? Thanks, JC
Technical SEO | | esiow20130 -
Change of domain name?
Hello, We are currently developing a new site for an existing online clothing retailer. The existing site is on a .co.uk domain, however we are targeting a global market and wondered whether we could/should launch the new site under a .com address and whether this would be beneficial? Most of our back links come from Affiliate blogs and we could quite easily change these to the new URL. Thanks Bilal
Technical SEO | | PLP1 -
Schema Markup and Google's Rich Snippet Tool
Has anyone ever used the snippet tool and gotten the following error "could not fetch website"? When using the tool and placing an url that does not have markup present it will show that as the error. Or if part of markup is wrong, it will diagnose it accordingly. Did a search online and found limited info...one of which someone had this error but when other users tested it, they were not getting the same error.
Technical SEO | | andrewv0 -
URL's for news content
We have made modifications to the URL structure for a particular client who publishes news articles in various niche industries. In line with SEO best practice we removed the article ID from the URL - an example is below: http://www.website.com/news/123/news-article-title
Technical SEO | | mccormackmorrison
http://www.website.com/news/read/news-article-title Since this has been done we have noticed a decline in traffic volumes (we have not as yet assessed the impact on number of pages indexed). Google have suggested that we need to include unique numerical IDs in the URL somewhere to aid spidering. Firstly, is this policy for news submissions? Secondly (if the previous answer is yes), is this to overcome the obvious issue with the velocity and trend based nature of news submissions resulting in false duplicate URL/ title tag violations? Thirdly, do you have any advice on the way to go? Thanks P.S. One final one (you can count this as two question credits if required), is it possible to check the volume of pages indexed at various points in the past i.e. if you think that the number of pages being indexed may have declined, is there any way of confirming this after the event? Thanks again! Neil0