Migrated Domain, 90% Drop in Organic Traffic, HELP!!!!
-
One week ago we migrated our old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to https://www.metro-manhattan.com/.
Our organic search traffic from Google has dropped about 90%. Is this normal? If so, how long should it take to recover?
We filed a submitted a domain change request on Webmaster tools one week ago. We are noticing that many of the www.nyc-officespace-leader.com pages are still indexed which seems strange after a week.
To complicate things, we filed a disavow file on April 9th for spammy links that pointed the NYC site. We filed the identical disavow of those links to the new Metro domain to ensure low quality links don't point to the new domain.
Prior to making the domain change request, we migrated 30-40 non critical pages from NYC to Metro domains. Webmaster Tools indicated that the traffic was normal on the migrated pages. We then migrated remaining pages and filed the domain change request on April 4th. It is after April 4th that traffic and ranking declined.
I would like to mention that there was no change in content; identical content was migrated from Metro to NYC
This does not seem normal. Research prior to the migration indicated that if proper steps were taken it should proceed with limited disruption in traffic and ranking.
Any ideas on how to remedy this situation?
Thanks, Alan
-
No this is ok. The old site will stay in the index for a few more weeks.
Can you identify if the missing traffic is all organic?
-
Hi Andrew:
I expected to take a hit, but I don't understand why the old domain remains indexed. Also, the extent of the drop in traffic. Is it abnormal that the old domain pages have not yet been removed 9 days after the move. Indexation for them dropped for a few days and then climbed. Is this a red flag for a fundamental problem? -
p.s. you've checked your google analytics installation?
-
Going HTTPS and a new domain name is quite a big change.
You will defiantly experience a drop in traffic but this should recover. But as you've changed domain names this could take 3 months.
A 90% drop is still big, but as your now averaging page 4 this is somewhat understandable.
-
Your average position used to be page 3. You're now averaging on page 4. This is part of the reason.
Have you lost a lot of referral traffic when you lost the backlinks.
Or is the traffic missing from organic?
Check analytics > acquisition > all traffic > channels
-
Exactly the same site.
Note that the only thing changes was the move to a new domain with an SSL certificate.
-
Is it basically the same site but with a different domain name?
i.e. all content / titles and meta descriptions the same?
-
Hi Andrew:
The redirects from all pages on the old URL redirect perfectly to the new domain. Any other ideas?
Thanks, Alan
-
Hello
Just to clarify this bit
"-Comprehensive redirects were done to the domain. Please see attached Search Console form for the permanent redirect. "
Is this the only redirect measure you have taken? (this is not sufficient)
You need to contact your domain name provider, online or on phone. Ask them to forward the old domain to the new domain.
If the new website structure is the same then all the URLs will connect up. Any that don't need redirects put in place done on the server of the new domain.
-
Hi Andrew:
Thanks for your response. Yes, something went terribly wrong!! Response to your questions:
-Comprehensive redirects were done to the domain. Please see attached Search Console form for the permanent redirect.
-The new domain is fully crawled.
-2 or 3 404s were detected. They are in the process of being fixed.
-As of April 10th, the average position of the old domain (NYC) was 28.2. As of April 10th average position of the new domain is 35.1.Real problem is the drop in clicks. New domain only got 5 or 6 yesterday. Normally, in March we would receive 80-90 visitors. Average position of the old domain in March was 26.8.
-I have attached several images showing the problem. One, labelled "Inconsistencies" shows some strange results. Indexation for the old domain dropped for a few days after the permanent redirect (301) but then climbed again. Seems very abnormal.
Another anomally: entering "site: www.metro-manhattan.com" does not bring up the URL in search results.
Any ideas or suggestions???????????????????
-
No this is not normal. Something is wrong.
Go into search console. Is your sitemap still running the old sitemap or has it been updated? Is the new domain fully crawled? If your site map is incorrect and 404ing this needs fixing.
Have you done comprehensive 301 redirects to the new domain? How many 404s do you have in search console? Have you used domain forwarding and resolved the urls at the new domain?
Also do you still have the search console with the old domain in it? Look at search analytics (in search traffic), what is your average position? compare to new domain - what is the average position for that. Have you had a big rankings drop? You must have, but this will show you the scale of the problem.
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
-
Domain migration via Wordpress - organic still 60% down four months later
Hi guys!Almost four months ago I performed a Wordpress domain migration. Three pet-based sites were migrated into a new pet-based one that incorporated them all - the new site is petskb.com and 240 posts were migrated.The site migration was performed via 301 wildcard re-directs using the .htaccess files in the old domains, which are still in place and working. I also used the site move tool in GSC. Afterwards, I performed an audit of the new site to ensure that all the old urls were being re-directed to the new one, which they were (and are). There have been no manual actions reported in GSC.The results have been very poor. A small few of the articles that were in the top 10 moved over and I quickly claimed the same positions in the new site. Most did not though and still sit >100 in the SERP or absolutely nowhere (or even omitted) using the main keyword.I've created about 60 new articles (using the same SEO analysis I did previously) since that time on the new site and not one of them has ranked <100 in all that time, whereas on the old sites they would initially rank somewhere in the top 50 after a couple of days and work their way up over the months. These new posts haven't moved though. The posts that were published on the new site four months ago are still in the exact same position.So, I've created new content, re-submitted the sitemap and manually requested re-indexing of the posts. Nothing has changed. I've hired SEO's and not one has found any problems with my site or how I performed the migration. Clearly there is a problem though. The original posts that were ranking previously and all the new posts have not moved in the SERP. There were a few spammy links pointing to the new domain but nothing significant, I did disavow these though - no more than on the old sites though.As a test, I created a new post on another domain which has no posts with the same long-tail keyword as one that has been on my new site for almost four months. The one I posted on the new domain out-ranked the one on petskb after just two days.Can anyone help? If you can I will personally travel to where you live and buy you several beers.Thanks,Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mattpettitt1 -
Need Help - Lost 75% Of Traffic Since May 2018
Sorry to go in-depth here, but want to give all available information. We went live late April 2018 with our two websites in Shopify (moved from Magento, same admin, different storeviews...which we find later to cause some issues). Both of these websites sell close to the same products (we purchased a competitor about 5 years ago, which is why we have two). The nice thing is that they do almost identical amounts in sales. They have done very well for years, especially in the last two years. Well, the core algo update around May 22nd-24th 2018 happened and wiped out about 65% of our Google traffic for one website (MySupplementStore.com). And this latest update, wiped out another 20%. I couldn't figure out why this would have happened, because we were very cautious about keeping things separate, unique descriptions etc. So I did some digging and this is what I found: The reviews we migrated over from Magento somehow were combined and added to both websites. This is something I didn't notice. I had this resolved a month ago so that each site's reviews are now only on that website. Our blog section was duplicated across both websites during the migration. Again, something I didn't notice, as we have close to over 1,000 blog posts per site. This was resolved two weeks ago. As I was looking more, I found that the last 6 months, a person working for us (for 3 years), started writing descriptions and pasting them on both websites, instead of making them unique to each website. I trusted her for years, but I think she just got lazy. She quit about a month before the migration as well. We are currently working on this, but its been taking awhile because we have over 5,000 products on each site and have no idea which ones are duplicates. I did also notice: Site very slow when checking site speed tools. Working on that this week. When I take snippets of text or do searches, many times it shows up in omitted results. No messages in Google Webmaster Tools So the question is... Do you think it is the duplicate content issues that caused the drop? Our other site is Best Price Nutrition, which didn't see a big drop at all during that update. If not, any other ideas why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Domain Migration Hell!
5 weeks ago we migrated our site to a new domain. We also installed an SSL certificate on the new domain. The new domain was purchased 5 years ago but we only used it as a redirect address. It was more consistent with our brand so we decided to migrate to it. Great care was taken setting up page to page redirects. A formal domain change request was made to Google. In fact the move was implemented with only a handful of broken links on a 500 page site. Those links were quickly fixed. Our traffic declined from about 350 visitors a week to as low as 40 visitors the first full week after the move. Now the number of organic Google visits is up to 80, a drop of 75% !!! All except 20 (out of 500) pages are reindexed on Google Search Console. MOZ domain authority for the new domain has climbed from 5 to about 12. The old domain had a DA of 23. In Google Search Console hundreds of "URL Not Allowed" errors are the site map for our previous domain that redirects to our new domain. Attached please see image of this. The site map for the new domain appears normal, but about 160 pages are indexed that are not in the sitemap. I wonder if these two issues have somehow contributed to the drop in ranking. I have included images showing GCT for the 2 domains. I posted on MOZ a month ago and was told it just might take time. No improvement and now I am wonder if there is not some issue with the sitemaps causing havoc. Are traffic is down more than 80%. This does not seem normal. Any advice? Any suggestions as to how to expedite recovery? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Still Seeing GSC Traffic in HTTP Property Post-Migration
We migrated to HTTPS in June 2017, so why would I still be seeing a bit of traffic in our HTTP property in Google Search Console? QyqQ2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | catbur0 -
Technical SEO Issues - Traffic Drop
Hi guys, I hope you're all doing well! We're a small personalised gifts company who specialise in the provision of phone cases, mugs, macbook covers and the like. I head up the Digital Marketing but have little experience in the technical side of SEO and have very limited resources in terms of budget and staffing. Over the past few months, I've been working on stripping down the thin content on the site, fixing duplicate content issues and focusing on other digital channels to boost revenue. However, as of recent we've noticed a significant drop in traffic and our rankings. I've tried to diagnose the problem and I'm convinced there are some technical SEO fixes that need to be implemented. Our website is www.mrnutcase.com If any of you have any ideas, I'd love to hear some of them. Greatly appreciated, Danny
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DannyNutcase0 -
301 process, migration to new domain
Hi all! We have an old site wordpress based, with great ranking and PR 7, called www.europe-internship.com which is going to be migrated into our new Django site www.eurasmus.com (specifically eurasmus.com/en/europe-internships)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eurasmus.com
The new one is a much more advanced version that we will keep developing. We have been migrating the information already but we are planning to apply the 301s in the next weeks to start passing the SEO value to our new site and traffic. We have all the url structures and everything checked and technically we are ready for it.
Therefore, we are almost ready. I have 2 questions: The new site includes more services, like accommodation, information...not only internships. Therefore, should we point the most relevant urls from our previous site to our home to share the value or just to the internships section? I am afraid that if the bounce rate goes higher from the 301 we could loose some value... 2)Should we point all the urls at the same time to the new site? Home, vacancies, blog pages, etc... or start gradually doing it to see how it goes till we make it to all the pages including the home? The old site still makes some money and I am not sure how quick will be to pass the SEO value, so in the way we may loose few thousand euros...We understand that, but we want to check what would be the best in your opinion. Let me know what you think and your opinion! Thank you in advance!0 -
Change of domain procedure
Hi Guys, I have been tasked with conducting a change of domain for our company website. The website will be exactly the same, just change from www.jamesburfield.co.uk to www.burfieldcreative.co.uk. This was attempted before but my boss got cold feet and switched back after he saw a drop in rankings. (He put in the redirects and went through the change of domain procedure with google). I have told him that I think its possible with minimal disruption and we have agreed even with some disruption it will better in the long run for the company. Here is the process I intend to follow: 1. Copy and upload site to new domain 2. Redirect all pages with a wildcard or individually - possibly drop the www also 3. Follow the change of domain procedure in webmaster tools 4. Change the href of as many as possible back links to point at the new domain Please let me know your thoughts on my plan and if there is anything else I can do to ensure we maintain our rankings. Any help is appreciated as this is my suggestion and my neck is on the line! Thanks guys! Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SimpsonGareth0 -
Changing domain extension to detoxify a domain
Hi there, A linkbuilding company that has been building links for us has not gained any sustained results. They have advised that our domain may be toxic, and that we should consider permanent redirecting from .co.uk to another domain extension in order to remedy this. Is this a recommendation worth considering?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maximise0