Changing domain names but still ranking as old one
-
Hi there,
I have a client who changed domain names back in November 2015 but is still coming up in search engines with their old domain name not their new one.
For example, I search for my clients name, let's call them Example B. So I search for "Example B" and within the search results they come up top and the title tag is correct as it says something along the lines of "Welcome to Example B". However the URL underneath is actually their old name which is Example A. When you click on the link, it redirects over to the new name so thats fine, but it's just annoying that Example A is still appearing when it should be Example B now.
I don't think they have a new Webmaster Tools account setup for their new domain (I need to check still), but they do still have their old one setup. Is there something I can do within Webmaster Tools to tell it that Example A is now gone and to start indexing and referring to them as Example B?
What else should I do to make sure their new name is coming up not their old one anymore?
-
Hi ,
Did you follow all of Google's Change of Address instructions? If redirects are in place, chances are you missed something else minor that can have a big impact.
-
Whenever you move domain names, you should make sure that you use 301 Permanent Redirects (you may want to verify this by looking at the server headers, doing a server header check).
Then, you need make sure that the Google Change of Address Tool has been used to tell Google that they moved from the old domain to the new domain. You'll need to verify the old domain and the new domain in the same Google Search Console account, and then do the Change of Address.
Whenever you move to another domain like this, the old domain name will still remain indexed for at least a year or so (sometimes longer), as that's just how Google handles it. So if the old domain name still shows up for certain search queries then that's normal.
In any case, though, 301 redirects must be used and the Change of Address Tool should be used, as well.
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
-
Highly ranked pages to new domain?
Hi everyone! We are ranked #1 for about 30 product pages at www.oldsite.com/product1 and we are wanting to move about 30 of those pages to a new site www.newsite.com/product1 (new domain and hosting - which we own). What is the best way to do this? I'm confused if you recreate those pages on the new domain vs. ftp move them, 301 re-directs, etc. Looking for the things we must do and the sequence to do it all, etc. Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamesmcd030 -
Temporary Domain Changes
Hi All, Our development team needs to do a temporary site name change from www.sitename.com to new.sitename.com and then wants to return to www.sitename.com. They need to do this for the whole site due to how it's built with single sign on (SSO) and how certain post login pages utilize pre login pages and need to keep people logged in. This process is changing with a CMS upgrade and website and post login pages will be independent of the pre login pages moving forward. My question is what is the best way to manage this transition? Right now it seems like the best solution I've been able to work out with development is to reduce the domain shift down to one week and use 302 Redirects, don't index the new.sitename.com site, and for that week and take my lumps as they come from search. Looking for any other suggestion that may help marketing work with dev without casting blame on any teams for drops in organic traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dapacifi0 -
Lost homepage rankings for one day
We had a strange thing happen to our website. We have a website that ranks for top keywords for some years. Last week we lost alle of our rankings for one day. The strange thing was, that the rankings were only lost on the homepage, the homepage didnt rank anymore. Even when i googled for 'homepage.com' google showed 'homepage.com/page' and not the homepage. After some reading i checked for the following: no-index sources in the source code - but no results checked for http respons code - 200 ok status checked for downtime in pingdom - no downtime With no rankings on the homepage i was losing 90% of the traffic, i went to GWT and did a fetch as google request, the website looked okay. After that i request a new indexation request. After this the website was back in google with all the old rankings. But what has happend, is still a question for me. Can this be an hack or a wordpress problem or is this realtime penguin with a hit. I also read things about Google flux, but it didnt happen before and it was just the homepage, with no index at all. What happend?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | remkoallertz0 -
We are redesigning our existing website. The domain is staying the same, but the sub-structure and page names are changing. Do I still need to do 301s?
We are redesigning our existing website. The domain is staying the same, but the sub-structure and page names are changing. Do I still need to do 301 redirects or will search engines know to remove the old 404 pages from the SERPs? We are redesigning our existing website. The domain is staying the same, but the sub-structure and page names are changing. Do I still need to do 301s?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrandOptimizations0 -
Company name doesn't have keyword: use domains instead?
Good Morning! Now, I'll admit, I may be obsessing a little too much on this, and it may not make that big of an impact in the long run, but with Google being introduced to the world if I were to start a business today I would try and include my keyword into the title of my business. For example Dollar Shave Club, at least they got the word shave in there. My business doesn't have a keyword in our name, is it beneficial to structure our URLs to include a keyword so that all of our URLs include that word? So if I sell organic bananas, but my company is called Evananas, is it worth it to have all domains become a child of Evananas.com/organic_bananas? That way at least we have the keyword "Organic Bananas" in our title? So I could then have things like: evananas.com/organic_bananas/recipes evananas.com/organic_bananas/benefits evananas.com/organic_bananas/taste_really_freeking_good Vs. evananas.com/recipes evananas.com/benefits evananas.com/taste_really_freeking_good I'm not sure it makes a difference. The other problem is I want to keep our URL's as short as possible. I feel like less is always more, but I was always under the impression domain/URL based keywords were rather powerful. What is the best practice in this case? Thanks Guys! Evan(ana)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
New Domain Vs. Existing Domain
Hello, A potential client of mine has been blacklisted because of bad SEO process basically they have over 1,500 toxic links on their site. They have penalised to such an extent that they are now on page 12 for most of their keywords and not ranking well on brand terms either. They are keen to on to a new domain entirely and ditch their current domain when we design their new site. I wanted to get people's opinion on whether this is the best course of action or should we try to salvage the current domain? Many thanks, Mat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Barques-Design0 -
Bing and Yahoo Ranks work, google ranks not happening
Bing and Yahoo Ranks work, google ranks not happening please help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Djdealeyo0
