Moving website and domain name without 301 Redirect or rel=canonical

[VanMaster]

I do not wish to draw attention to my company, so I am using code names. For the sake of this discussion, we are a new car dealership representing Brand X Cars. The manufacturer of Brand X Cars pushes its dealers toward a website hosting company called CarWebsites in order to maintain a level of quality and control with each dealer. However, we have found the platform to be too restricting, and are switching to our own WordPress site.

Unfortunately Brand X is claiming ownership of our original domain, BrandXCarDealer.net, so we have switched to BrandXCarDealer.com (which we prefer anyways). Now both websites are running, and there is duplicate content of everything. Brand X is not cooperative and will not 301 redirect to the new site, and we do not have access to the of the website for a rel=canonical. Brand X is also dragging its feet on shutting down BrandXCarDealer.net. We do still have access to change the content of the pages on the BrandXCarDealer.net site, but that is pretty much as far as our control goes.

So my question is, is there anything we can do, without using a 301 redirect or rel=canonical, to tell Google to pay attention to the new BrandXCarDealer.com rather than the old BrandXCarDealer.net? Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!

[VanMaster]

Thanks, this is all great advice! I'll have to look into the CarWebsites Terms of Use to see if we have a leg to stand on when it comes to domain and content ownership.

The local listings and most other links around the web are already pointing to the new site, so that is a good thing.

That is very interesting about the .CARS extension. I have always wondered if that would have an impact... I might try that when I get some time down the road.

I have also been considering going to each landing page on the old BrandXCarDealer.net site, erase all the content, and replace it with, "This page has been moved to BrandXCarDealer.com/landing-page-1"

Any thoughts?

[GlobeRunner]

Sherry, unfortunately, without having a 301 redirect in place, there's not much you can do to directly tell Google that the site has been moved. In order to use their Google Change of Address Tool, you have to set up the 301 permanent redirect from the old URL to the new URL (old domain to new domain). If you can get access, that's what you really need to do.

If the old site won't be taken down, there are a few things you can do, like send them a stern letter or let the lawyers get involved. Typically a letter from a lawyer will get their attention. You can, also, file a DMCA request with their web host, which they must comply with, telling the web host that the material on the old site is copyrighted (you own the copyright and rights to it) and it must be taken down.

If they won't give you the domain name, then you can file a UDRP domain dispute with ICANN to try to get ahold of the domain name. That will take some time, though. But in the long run you'll get ahold of the domain and be able to redirect it.

In the meantime, while you're dealing with all of this, you can begin to get all of your local listings (like Google My Business, etc.) and local citations moved over to point to your new site rather than the old site. In fact, you can start building links to the new domain name and Google will, hopefully, start ranking your new domain name higher in the search results.

Finally, you might actually consider moving the site to a .CARS domain extension, we've seen some really great success from dealerships that have moved from a .COM to a .CARS domain.