Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Lost ranking after domain switch
-
I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects.
I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com).
Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?
-
faced the same issue, i have redirected my old domain spotifymod.com to new domain spotypremium.com on Nov 20, and till 24 everything was going very well, even i see some increase in traffic, new redirected domain was showing on some new keywords as the domain name also have some volume.
I have redirected following all the guidelines according to https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/site-move-with-url-changes
But i have checked today and some of my keywords are totally vaniched from serp, there are no results of some pages even in top 200 results. The pages which was gaining more traffic are
https://spotifymod.com/spotify-vanced-apk/
https://spotifymod.com/spotify-downloader-apk/
https://spotifymod.com/download-spotify-plus/which was ranked on 2 or 3 before i have switched domain. Now i want to know what i can do, till now i have created new social media accounts for the new domain, domain was fresh i have registered it 1 month ago,
I am trying to reach out to webmaster to ask them to change teh link towards new domain,
But i am getting some video out of the viewport errors for new domain on google search console, while domain is still moving in search console and according to google do not change content for 2,3 weeks.
Some pages are still intact in search now i am confused.
-
This is a great response. Thanks for this!
-
Thanks for the responses. The posts I read on moving domains didn't prepare me for a permanent drop in domain authority. I had picked up that it was possible to transfer this over, so a bit disappointed if that's not the case! Ouch.
It's only been two weeks so I'll hang in there a little longer but also take the advice about trying to build new inbound links.
-
How long has the drop in traffic been happening for?
I have switched names of a few branded domains to shorter URLs like it looks like you are doing and I saw a significant drop in traffic for a while, around 3 months. I was sweating it hard, but it did eventually pop back up.
Just try to build some new quality links to the new URL using your brand name as the anchor text and also the naked URL as the anchor text so Google can see that it is emerging as the new preferred domain. A blog post also helps to announce the domain change and once created spread it far and wide on social media.
-
Wowser - sorry to hear about the drop in rankings & traffic.
RE: "Is this normal?" Yes.
It's normal to still see traffic coming from your "old" links. Google needs time to get all of your old domain URLs out of its cache and replace them with new. Your 301 redirect map and your new domain's XML sitemap will definitely help speed up the process of the replacement. You can keep an eye on how far Google's come with removing the old URLs from its cache by searching "site:whitefusemedia.com" as well as see how many of your new domain's URLs it has indexed by searching "site:whitefuse.com."
It's also normal to see your traffic drop like this with a domain switch, unfortunately. You've switched a domain with a domain authority of 40+ to a domain with a domain authority of under 20. Your website, even with the redirect strategy, is less authoritative than it once was, and thus, it will rank lower.
RE: "Should I expect to see this bounce back?" It depends.
You have a big gap to make up with your domain switch in the overall authority your new domain has. You will see some improvements likely happen over the first few months after launch, but in my experience, it's not very likely you're going to be able to close that gap just with a redirect strategy. (Remember, too, a 301 redirect doesn't transfer 100% of the previous value). If it's been more than a few months already, then you might expect that this is your new baseline of organic traffic. In order to reach authority levels at the same level, you're going to have to undertake a significant amount of authority-building and link-building efforts. In past projects like these, we've even gone so far as trying to contact/reach out to some of our most credible back-link suppliers to let them know that we've updated our site, and to link directly to the new site at the new location. We had some success with those, but you're relying a lot on webmasters to make those updates on their time/own merits. Regardless, it will take time and energy, and unfortunately a lot of it.
RE: "is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?" Yes.
Are you willing to switch back to the previous domain? That is the best way to reclaim your lost rankings/traffic at this point (and do the reverse 301 redirect strategy, now that the new URLs are also in the world.
If you can't go back for branding/internal/other reasons, then my recommendations are to:
-
Survey your most credible backlinks from the old domain and reach out to see if they're willing to link to the new site/location.
-
Work on building new/credible links. As a first step, making sure your new domain is replaced across the main reputable web directories is a good start. You can find categorization directories for your business here: https://moz.com/local/categories. Make sure you update your Google Business listing, Yahoo!, Bing, Social Media profiles, YellowBook, etc, etc.
-
Build new content and promote it to get more valuable shares/links/traffic!
Hope that helps and good luck!
-
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
-
Page Rank Flow
I wonder if someone can help me understand clearly page rank flow. If we have a website with a Home page, Services, About and Contact as a very basic website and the page rank will flow to each of those pages from the Home page (i'm not including internal linking between pages or anchor text from the home page content - this is a question purely about home page flow via the main navigation). If the Services page had 3 drop down pages. Would the home page rank also flow to each of these or is it going to the Services page which then distributes it to the three drop down. So instead of Home page rank flowing to 3 pages 33% each - it is flowing to 6 pages 16.6% each. Or is it flowing to 3 pages - 33.3% then the Services pages get a third of 33.3% ->10.1% I know this is simplifying it all a great deal- but it is the basic concept I am trying to grasp on this simple example. Thanks
Technical SEO | Jun 13, 2019, 1:23 AM | AL123al0 -
How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?
I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs. Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches. Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!). I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap. My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains. I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
Technical SEO | Nov 21, 2016, 7:59 PM | nathangdavidson2
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJ Can anyone suggest a course of action? many thanks, Nathan0 -
Redirect typo domains
Hi, What's the "correct" way of redirecting typo domains? DNS A record goes to the same ip address as the correct domain name Then 301 redirects for each typo domain in the .htaccess Subdomains on typo urls still redirect to www or should they redirect to the subdomain on the correct url in case the subdomain exists?
Technical SEO | Jul 10, 2015, 12:18 PM | kuchenchef0 -
How well do .ltd.uk domain names rank?
Hi all, do .ltd.uk domain names rank well? How well do they stack up against a .com or .co.uk? I'd really appreciate any feedback from people with any experience with these domains. Thanks John
Technical SEO | Feb 22, 2013, 3:20 PM | john251810100 -
Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)
I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!
Technical SEO | Oct 2, 2012, 12:49 PM | w0lfiesmithUK0 -
Umlaut in domain
Hi, My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it. However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to: schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge? If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc) Kind regards,
Technical SEO | Sep 6, 2012, 2:52 PM | media-surfer
Jason.0 -
Beating a keyword Domain
Has anyone here managed to beat a keyword/exact match domain to top spot? I am currently second and wondering if it is worth the time and effort to knock it off the top spot. How hard is it to get these very annoyingly favoured domains off 1st? Any help and advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | Apr 10, 2012, 12:47 PM | pauledwards0 -
What is the best method to block a sub-domain, e.g. staging.domain.com/ from getting indexed?
Now that Google considers subdomains as part of the TLD I'm a little leery of testing robots.txt with something like: staging.domain.com
Technical SEO | Oct 6, 2011, 10:55 PM | fthead9
User-agent: *
Disallow: / in fear it might get the www.domain.com blocked as well. Has anyone had any success using robots.txt to block sub-domains? I know I could add a meta robots tag to the staging.domain.com pages but that would require a lot more work.0