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://moz.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
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
-
301 Redirect Only Home Page/Root Domain via Domain Registrar Only
Hi All, I am really concerned about doing a 301 redirect. This is my situation: Both Current and New Domain is registered with a local domain registrar (similar to GoDaddy but a local version) Current Domain: Servers are pointing to Wix servers and the website is built and hosted with Wix I would like to do a 301 redirect but would like to do it in the following way with a couple of factors to keep in mind: 99% of my link are only pointed to the home page/root domain only. Not to subdirectories. New Domain: I will register this with wix with a new plan but keep the exact sitemap and composition of current website and launch with new domain. Current Domain: I want to change server pointing to wix to point to local domain registrar servers. Then do a 301 redirect for only the home page/root domain to point to the new domain listed with wix. So 301 is done via local registrar and not via Wix. Another point to mention is it will also change from Http to Https as well as a name change. Your comments on the above will be greatly appreciated and as to whether there is risk in trying to do a 301 redirect as above. Doing it as above it also cheaper if I do the 301 via the wix platform I will need to register a full new premium plan and run it concurrently to the old plan whereas if I do it as mentioned above will only have the additional domain annual fee. Look forward to your comments. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue10 -
Redirecting Ecommerce Site
Hi I'm working on a big site migration I'm setting up redirects for all the old categories to point to the new ones. I'm doing this based on relevancy, the categories don't match up exactly but I've tried to redirect to the most relevant alternative. Would this be the right approach?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
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 -
301 Redirect from unused domain
Hi All First question here so go easy.. I have a property site which is working well so far considering it;s early days, unfortunately some of my earlier efforts did not go so well and one in particular I pretty much destroyed in my attempts to improve the site SEO. Lucky enough my SEO skills have improved quite a bit lately, largely thanks to the great tools, tutorials and experts here at Moz 🙂 My question is whether I can use a 301 redirect to pass the domain authority and any link equity from an unused site to the one that ive done a better job on? it would seem a little sketchy to me and I would prefer not to get slapped and penalized "again" for doing something dodgy... Thanks everyone and thanks for all the help over the last 6 months or so.. Wes Dunn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wesdunn19771 -
Worpress Redirect
I am migrating a WP site from one domain to another for a client. WP is installed at the root. Typically I would simply issue a 301-redirect for the entire domain, however, in this case, the client wants the content in 2 specific subfolders to remain live on the old site and have everything else redirected. Example: olddomain.com/subfolder-1/ olddomain.com/subfolder-2/ Question: what would the the htaccess code look like to pull this off? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW0 -
Move webshop domain to the brand domain?
Hello, A client of mine has a brand with a website for over 10 years now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seeders
About 4 years ago the have opened a webshop on an other domain (like www.brandnamewebshop.com). At this moment the brand domain has a seomoz authority of 45.
The webshop domain authority is 25. The question:
Would it not be better to transfer the webshop to the brand domain because of the domain authority? If so, how can this be done the best way? With a 301?
I also think: what a loss of energy of building the authority on the other domain.
Is it an idea to use both domains for a webshop and rewrite the content? Or is there an other way to still make use of the built up domain authority? Would it really help the other domain when I make a 301 redirect (and make use of the pointing links to the webshop domain?). I hope somebody have some experience with this...
Looking forward to the possibilities! Gerjan0 -
Redirect Help - Domain Change and Website Redesign
Hi there, I've redesigned a website for a client, but we are also changing domains and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up the redirects from their old domain to the new one. 95% of their search engine traffic originally came through brand related keywords that landed on their homepage, and most of the remaining 15% landed on 3 other pages. The new site has pages to replace these 3 main SEO pages, and I'm about to set 301 redirects from their old domain, but I can't figure out the quickest/best way to do it. Is it possible to set up a specific redirect for the 4 main pages (Home + plus the 3 others) then a "catch all" type of thing for the rest of the pages, that redirect either to the homepage, or some sort of "Check out our new Site" landing page. How do you do this, or is there a better way to set it up? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timscullin0
