Domain Migration Hell!
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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,
Alan -
Hello Kingalan1,
I did not see a screenshot. Has it been removed?
If Google is unable to access the old URLs (i.e. URL Not Allowed) they will be unable to see the redirect to the new one. I'd like to help you with this. Can I see the screenshot or can you give me some examples of old URLs?
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Hi James:
We acquired the domain in 2012. We have used it for Gmail but have not used it as a web domain. I don't see how it could be contaminated....
What do you mean by hand submitting daily? Do you mean manual submissions of each URL on Google Search Console? Are you saying that very frequent submissions of new content will help? Are you saying that perhaps it will take 6 months to recover???!!!!!!!
I am really puzzled because we really did everything 100% by the book.
Thank,
Alan -
Hi James:
Thanks so much for your response!
We did not change anything on our Wordpress site. It is the identical site on the identical server.
According to my developer the errors in Google Search Console for the old domain (domain A) are normal considering that domain "B" has taken its place.
All the redirect work. We are not seeing any errors. All pages have been reindexed according to domain "B". However we are seeing a 90% drop in traffic.
This does not at all seem normal for a domain migration. Everything was done by the book.
I wonder if there is some sort of Google Penalty at play? What is strange is that traffic from Bing and Yahoo remain at levels prior to the migration.
Thanks,
Alan
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