How to properly change your website's address in Webmaster Tools?
-
Hi There,We've launched a new website and as part of the update have changed our domain name - now we need to tell Google of the changes:
- Both sites were verified in Webmaster Tools
- From the old site's gear icon, we chose "Change of address"
- As part of the "Change of address" checklist Google presented, we added 301 redirects to redirect the old domain to the new one
- But now that the 301 redirects are in place, Google can no longer verify the old site
- And because it can no longer verify the old site, Google won't let us complete the change of address form
How do we tell Google of the change of address in this instance - and has anyone else encountered this?CheersBen
-
Must've been a Webmaster tools issue - tried the whole process again and this time Webmatser Tools verifies the site with the 301 redirects in place
-
Thanks for the answer but the steps you posted are the same steps we've tried (and posted).
The issue is that the instructions/checks in the change of address form require:
- A 301 redirect on the old site to redirect traffic to the new one
- Valid verification of the old site
But as soon as the 301 redirect is in place, Google can no longer verify the old site because it's redirecting to the new one - the old site is essentially unreachable.
Has anyone else seen this or are we doing something wrong?
Cheers
-
Hi there,
- On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want to move from.
- Click the gear icon; then click Change of Address.
- Follow the instructions in the **Change of site address **tool.
- Monitor your traffic as indicated in Move a site with URL changes.
You can ffollow the guidelines here https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en
Hope it helps you.
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
-
Clean URL vs. Parameter URL and Using Canonical URL...That's a Mouthfull!
Hi Everyone, I a currently migrating a Magento site over to Shopify Plus and have a question about best practices for using the canonical URL. There is a competitor that I believe is not doing it the correct way, so I want to make sure my way is the better choice. With 'Vendor Pages' in Shopify, they show up looking like: https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/vendors?q=Cellucor. Not as clean. Problem is that Shopify also creates https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucor. Same products, same page, just a different more clean URL. I am seeing both indexed in Google. What I want to do is basically create a canonical URL from the URL with the parameter that points to the clean URL. The two pages are very similar. The only difference is that the clean URL page has some additional content at the top of the page. I would say the two pages are 90% the same. Do you see any issue with that?
Technical SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Change of address form in Webmaster Tools
I have changed my domain from .co.uk to .com and tried to submit a change of address form in Google Webmaster Tools. However it seems because I redirect my home page onto www.domain.com/index.php I cannot submit the form as it is not a domain name. Is there a way round this? It is not currently an option to move away from www.domain.com/index.php Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | TheHutGroup0 -
Links in Webmaster Tools that aren't really linking to us
I've noticed that there is a domain in WMT that Google says is linking to our domain from 173 different pages, but it actually isn't linking to us at all on ANY of those pages. The site is a business directory that seems to be automatically scraping business listings and adding them to hundreds of different categories. Low quality crap that I've disavowed just in case. I have hand checked a bunch of the pages that WMT is reporting with links to us by viewing source, but there's no links to us. I've also used crawlers to check for links, but they turn up nothing. The pages do, however, mention our brand name. I find this very odd that Google would report links to our site when there isn't actually links to our site. Has anyone else ever noticed something like this?
Technical SEO | | Philip-DiPatrizio0 -
Webmaster Tools stopped updating my sites
On Feb 6th WMT stopped updating the stats for my two main sites. I have seen other people complain about this but it seems like it's not known what causes it or if it's by design. Does anyone here have any insight on this issue? Thanks, Greg Davis AntiqueBanknotes
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
What are the pros and cons of changing my domain from .com to .us in Google webmaster tools?
Hi, I'm migrating my site from a .com domain to local country domains. I'm wondering what to consider if i chose to move the .com to .us domain. What should I consider before deciding? BR
Technical SEO | | Quru0 -
DNS error on webmaster tool
Google webmaster tool is showing DNS error and that is leading to many server error (502,500) almost 50+ in every crawl. Recently Google crawled one of our sub domains that we did not want google to crawl. We blocked it via Robots.txt and also removed all the URL's and since then we are having this issue. Any suggestions how to fix this DNS error? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | tpt.com0 -
Webmaster Tools finding phantom 404s?
We recently (three months now!) switched over a site from .co.uk to .com and all old urls are re-directing to the new site. However, Google Webmaster tools is flagging up hundreds of 404s from the old site and yet doesn't report where the links were found, i.e. in the 'Linked From' tab there is no data and the old links are not in the sitemap. SEOmoz crawls do not report any 404s. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Switch_Digital0 -
Google has not indexed my site in over 4 weeks, what's the problem?
We recently put in permanent redirects to our new url, but Google seems to not want to index the new url. There was no problems with the old url and the new url is brand new so should have no 'black marks' against it. We have done everything we can think off in terms of submitting site maps, telling google our url has changed in webmaster tools, mentioning the new url on social sites etc...but still nothing. It has been over 4 weeks now since we set up the redirects to the url, any ideas why Google seems to be choosing not to index it? Thanks
Technical SEO | | cewe0