How long should an old site redirecting to a new site remain activated on a server?
-
Once I switch a site to a new domain (with links to corresponding/relative pages), will I have to keep the old site live forever for those links to work, or how long should I wait before I inactivate the old site on our server?
-
301 redirects are called permanent, but that's not really the case. They are permanent only as long as they are in place. If you want to see this, do everything as Andy said and then remove the redirect. You'll notice your traffic drop and when you put the redirects back the traffic will recover. Go ahead and do this every year and you'll see that each time it drops. We've dealt with drops that happened from domains that haven't been active in over 5 years, so as EGOL alluded to, keep them forever.
-
Google has an extremely long memory for old URL's being live and linking. It is anoying realy.
Links from websites to your old domain are still there, you want to hold on to that value. Thus you will keep the old domain redirected. You do not need a server for that, just the domain pointing to the server and redirecting it on your server. Your web hosting support can help you with that (if not, switch to wp engine)
-
Mine will still be there when I attend my funeral.
-
Not at all - on the new site, setup a list of pages to be redirected (301) to corresponding pages on the new domain and make sure you advise Google through Webmaster Tools that the site has moved.
However, don't turn everything off on the old server until you have confirmed all is working on the new one.
-Andy
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
-
Website redesign- change of server . What to do with old site? Keep for a while or delete right away?
Hey Mozzers, Two days ago, we redesigned our website and changed the server at the same time to get faster loading times. Here is what we have done. The old site was hosted on ipage, new site with a new design hosted on UPCLOUD. We changed the A record to the new server, uploaded a new site, submitted a new sitemap to Google Search console, 301 redirected all old URLs to new ones, most have changed a bit. Old URLs were ending with " .html "the new ones do not have that at the end. Submitted AMP pages to Google as well. Now here is my question. Should we delete the old site completely from ipage or should we keep it for a while? Google has indexed the new URLs that were created with the redesign, these URLs did not exist on the old site. But it still shows most of the old URLs on SERPs (these are URLs that have been 301 redirected to a new equivalent page) I understand 2 days is not very long for Google to get everything right, but I am not sure what we should do with the old site? Keep it or get rid of it to help Google index the new one only. FYI every single old URL that appears on Google search when clicked on will take you to the right place, we made sure there are no 404s at all. As this is very important to our business and we get most of it from Google I want to make sure we do it right for SEO purposes. The agency that designed the site did not really know the answer to that question, as they do not have SEO specialists. Please help, any input you might have will be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | Davit19850 -
Is WP okay for E commerce sites?
Do any of you out there use wordpress for an ecommerce site? I'm getting some mixed reviews on it (but it's the internet, so that's bound to happen). Is there any sort of site traffic or page limit that would make using wordpress a bad idea? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Need to hire a tech for find out why google spider can't access my site
Google spider can't access my site and all my pages are gone out of serps. I've called network solutions tech support and they say all is fine with the site which is wrong. does anyone know of a web tech who i can hire to fix this issue? Thanks, Ron
Web Design | | Ron100 -
URLs appear in Google Webmaster Tools that I can't find on my own site?!?
Hi, I have a Magento e-commerce site (clothing) and when I had a look through some of the sections in Google Webmaster Tools I found URLs that I can't find on my site. For example, a product url maybe http://www.example.co.uk/product-url/ which is fine. In that product there maybe three sizes of the product (Small, Medium, Large) and for some reason Googlebot is sometimes finding a url like: http://www.example.co.uk/product-url/1202/ has been found and when clicked on is a live url (Status code: 200) with is one of the sizes (medium). However I have ran a site crawl in Screaming Frog and other crawl tests and can't seem to find where Googlebot is finding these URLs. I think I need to: 1. Find how Googlebot is finding these urls? 2. Find out how to keep out of index (e.g. robots.txt, canonical etc.... Any help would be much appreciated and I'm happy to share the URL with members if they think they can have a look and help with this problem. I can share specific URLs which might make the issue seem clearer, let me know? Thanks, Darrell
Web Design | | clickyleap0 -
Hey on some of my report cards its saying im not using rel canonical correctly how do i change this on my site?
on some of my report cards its saying certain things featured on my services page are actually linking to my blog or something. and its saying im not using rel canonical correctly. can you help me out?
Web Design | | ClearVisionDesign0 -
Buying mutliple keyword rich domain names and directing them to one site
I've noticed some folks buying keyword rich domain names and pointing them to one site to try to rank for those keywords. An example of this is a plumbing business that buys domains like austinplumber.com, localaustinplumbingservice.com, bestplumberinaustin.com and then pointing these domains to their main website. Does this help the site rank for these key phrases? How does google see this? Thanks mozzers! Ron
Web Design | | Ron100 -
What are some on-pg recommendations for a flash resort site?
One of my clients want to be index for all their pages but I am afraid the website may have difficulty since it is all in flash. The website is a luxury brand for resorts. The website is me.graficode.com/preprod/ and currently has 6 main subfolers for resorts. Please let me know what recommendations will help me organically. It is hard to add content which will cause probelms for headers and keyword density.
Web Design | | Melia0 -
Aged .com domain or brand new .co.uk for UK site?
Should i buy a 2 year old .com domain or brand new .co.uk domain for a site i am making for UK (google.co.uk optimisation). I am struggling to find good aged .co.uk domains, there are loads of nice .com's that are old, any thoughts? thanks
Web Design | | SamBuck0