Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Old domain to new domain

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Old domain to new domain

    Technical SEO
    2
    3
    793
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • AL123al
      AL123al last edited by

      Hi,

      A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B  -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication.

      However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website.  I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command?

      Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself!

      Should I:

      1. Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some?

      or

      1. Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings?

      Thanks for any help

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AL123al
        AL123al last edited by

        Yes, that's great. Thank you

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • ThompsonPaul
          ThompsonPaul last edited by

          Definitely use option #2. There's no reason to have to maintain a server presence for the old site if it's been replaced. This is best practice - still fully allows ranking authority transfer to new domain.

          Yes, it's a lot of work to do the redirects. Watch for cases where large numbers of URLs are the same, with just the domain name changed. Or that all have similar change required (e.g. removing a /category directory) Those can be handled with a single regex rule instead of having to create an individual redirect for each.

          To ensure you catch as many of the old URLs as possible you can use the Screaming Frog crawl as the list of URLs needing redirects. Can help to merge that with with the old site's XML sitemap for completeness. Note - you'll have to redo the redirects from the plugin as well, as those will no longer work after the DNS is pointed to the new domain.  Check the old site's htaccess for an legacy redirects as well. It's usually also beneficial to redirect the images and other important media (pdfs and other downloadable files) if you can.

          Then set up a process to monitor Google Search Console and Google Analytics on the new site to immediately detect and correct any new 404 errors that show up. (That's another major advantage of doing the redirect on the new site's htaccess - the 404s will actually be detectable with tools.)

          Lastly, ensure you've used the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console to notify Google that the old site has moved to the new domain. Keeping the old site verified in GSC will allow for this, and will let you monitor the drop-off in indexing of the old site as Google recognises and indexes the transition.

          Hope that all makes sense?

          Paul

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • wfm-uk

            Lost ranking after domain switch

            I recently migrated from https://whitefusemedia.com to https://whitefuse.com. The website URL structure and content remained the same and I followed all the best practice guidance regarding checks on the new domain and appropriate 301 redirects. I have seen traffic drop by about 50% and the traffic that is still coming through is mainly coming through links still listed by Google under the old domain (https://whitefusemedia.com). Is this normal? Should I expect to see this bounce back, or is there anything I can do now to regain the rankings?

            Technical SEO | | wfm-uk
            0
          • arun.negi

            We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog.

            We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. This was done with the purpose of gaining backlinks to our main website as well along with to our blog. This set us very low in organic traffic and not to mention, lost the backlinks. For anything, they are being redirected to 301 code. Kindly suggest changes to bring back all the traffic.

            Technical SEO | | arun.negi
            0
          • usDragons

            Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?

            My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!

            Technical SEO | | usDragons
            0
          • webignite

            Are .clinic domains effective?

            We acquired a .clinic domain for a client, they are right now running under a .ca and I was just wondering if there were any cons to making the switch. On the flip side are there any pros? I've tried to search for the answer but couldn't seem to come across anything, thank you if you have any knowledge or could point me to a resource.

            Technical SEO | | webignite
            0
          • SeaDrive

            Redirect root domain to www

            I've been having issues with my keyword rankings with MOZ and this is what David at M0Z asked me to do below.   Does anyone have a solution to this?  I'm not 100% sure what to do.  Does it hurt ranking to have a domain at the root or not?  Can I 301 redirect a whole site or do I have to do individual pages. "Your campaign is looking for rankings for the www version of the campaign but the URL resolves as a root domain. This would explain the discrepancy. Since there is no re-direct between the two, you can have brickmarkers.com 301 re-direct to www.site.com  which will prevent you from re-creating your campaign to track the root domain. Once the re-direct is in place it will take a while for Google to show the www version in the results in which your campaign rankings will be accurate." Thanks

            Technical SEO | | SeaDrive
            0
          • TP_Marketing

            .ca and. com domains

            Hello, currently the main site im working on is a .com, but have the .ca version purchased from register.com.  should i have this setup to redirect to the .com site. will google see these as dup content.  We have the .ca for our canadian customers but both sites are identical. Thank you

            Technical SEO | | TP_Marketing
            0
          • kchandler

            Block a sub-domain from being indexed

            This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines? One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag. Thanks! - Kyle

            Technical SEO | | kchandler
            0
          • askthetrainer

            How to Redirect only specific pages to new domain

            My HTACCESS FILE IS AS FOLLOWS: rewriteengine on
            rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
            rewriterule ^mydomain/(.*)$ "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L] #4d864805b49b5 I want to move ONLY specific pages from this domain to a new domain How do I edit my HTACCESS (which redirects http:// to www.) to move specific pages from old domain (which I have to delete) to new domain.... I.e. http://mydomaon.com/move.html needs to move to http://mynewdomain.com/move.html Where i can delete the original domains

            Technical SEO | | askthetrainer
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.