Google is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place
-
Hi there,
You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first.
A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com"
The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently =>
Cache-Control => private
Content-Length => 174
Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
Connection => closeDoes the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago.
Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain!
Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening.
Best,
-
Hi Issa,
This is a great question and something I actually asked Gary Illyes of Google on his Google AMA.
For me the site:olddomain.com has been inconsistent; sometimes with domain name migrations everything tidies up within a few weeks, other times it lingers like Andreas' fantastic example of SEO Moz.
Anyway, Gary said "You don't need to do anything. We're simply surfacing the old URLs to... Not confuse users i guess? Honestly, that URL we show in the results are sometimes fairly useless, maybe we should test again what happens if we remove them" From the answer I think Gary is trying to imply that keeping rankings whilst showing old domain is done to keep things familiar for users.
Regarding the index returned during a site search, I understand this is historic.
Here's the link for the full question and context: https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/ao3fmk/i_am_gary_illyes_googles_chief_of_sunshine_and/eg1lps1/
Hope this helps slightly!
Nick
-
Thank you Andreas,
But is the redirect HTTP Header reading correct or not?
Also, site:seomoz.com is showing a very small number of pages, while my clients old website is all appearing on Google. Every single page.
Issa
-
even seomoz.org is shown when you search it with site-parameter.
No error as long as it is not shown for search queries
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
-
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Vanity URLs are being indexed in Google
We are currently using vanity URLs to track offline marketing, the vanity URL is structured as www.clientdomain.com/publication, this URL then is 302 redirected to the actual URL on the website not a custom landing page. The resulting redirected URL looks like: www.clientdomain.com/xyzpage?utm_source=print&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=printcampaign. We have started to notice that some of the vanity URLs are being indexed in Google search. To prevent this from happening should we be using a 301 redirect instead of a 302 and will the Google index ignore the utm parameters in the URL that is being 301 redirect to? If not, any suggestions on how to handle? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seogirl221 -
Cached pages still showing on Google
We noticed our QA site showing up on Google so we blocked them in our robot.txt file. We still had an issue with them crawling it so we blocked the site from the public. Now Google is still showing a cached version from the first week in March. Do we just have to wait until they try to re-crawl the site to clear this out or is there a better way to try and get these pages removed from results?
Technical SEO | | aspenchicago0 -
How to know which pages are indexed by Google?
So apparently we have some sites that are just duplicates of our original main site but aiming at different markets/cities. They have completely different urls but are the same content as our main site with different market/city changed. How do I know for sure which ones are indexed. I enter the url into Google and its not there. Even if I put in " around " it. Is there another way to query google for my site? Is there a website that will tell you which ones are indexed? This is probably a dumb question.
Technical SEO | | greenhornet770 -
Redirect non www. domain to WWW. domain for established website?
Hey guys, The website in question has been online for more than 5 years but there are still 2 versions of the website. Both versions are indexed by Google and of course, this will result in duplicate content. Is it necessary to redirect the non-www domain to the www. domain. What are the cons and advantages? Will the www. links replace the non-www links when it comes to keyword rankings? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | BruLee0 -
301 redirect
Hi All, I have just completed a 301 redirect on my site http://www.klinehimalaya.com and I was just starting a new campaign on SEOmoz and I got this message: Roger has detected a problem:
Technical SEO | | gorillakid
We have detected that the domain www.klinehimalaya.com and the domain klinehimalaya.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. My only other question, is my .htaccess codeing correct and how long will it take to show it is correct in SEOmoz and online? All ".htaccess" code: AddHandler php-stable .php
**_Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]_** Lastly, I have recently changed all of my files from .html to .php is this going to hurt my SEO and is the code "RewriteRule (.*).html$ /$1.php [R=301,L]" going to fix the issue by redirecting the .html links to the .php pages? Any suggestions or help appreciated. Paul.0 -
Is 301 redirecting all old URLS after a new site redesign to the root domain bad for SEO?
After a new site redesign ...would it hinder our rankings if we 301 redirected all old URLS that are returning 404 error codes to the root domain (home page) ? Would this be a good temporary solution until we are able to redirect the pages to the appropriate corresponding page? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Removing 301 Redirects
Is it safe to remove old 301 Redirects from an SEO standpoint and can 301s dramatically affect seo? Prior to switching our old domain over to our new domain, we had (and currently still do) tons of 301 redirects, because of optimizing our file names and structure. Then our old domain was redirected to our new domain in the same redirect file. So that being said, now that our new domain has been up and running for about 3 months, would it be safe for me to get rid of the old 301 redirects and redirect anything that was on our old domain to our new domains home page? This would clean up our redirects tremendously and I hope would help with SEO.
Technical SEO | | hfranz0