Google is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place
-
Hi there,
You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first.
A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com"
The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently =>
Cache-Control => private
Content-Length => 174
Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
Connection => closeDoes the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago.
Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain!
Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening.
Best,
-
Hi Issa,
This is a great question and something I actually asked Gary Illyes of Google on his Google AMA.
For me the site:olddomain.com has been inconsistent; sometimes with domain name migrations everything tidies up within a few weeks, other times it lingers like Andreas' fantastic example of SEO Moz.
Anyway, Gary said "You don't need to do anything. We're simply surfacing the old URLs to... Not confuse users i guess? Honestly, that URL we show in the results are sometimes fairly useless, maybe we should test again what happens if we remove them" From the answer I think Gary is trying to imply that keeping rankings whilst showing old domain is done to keep things familiar for users.
Regarding the index returned during a site search, I understand this is historic.
Here's the link for the full question and context: https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/ao3fmk/i_am_gary_illyes_googles_chief_of_sunshine_and/eg1lps1/
Hope this helps slightly!
Nick
-
Thank you Andreas,
But is the redirect HTTP Header reading correct or not?
Also, site:seomoz.com is showing a very small number of pages, while my clients old website is all appearing on Google. Every single page.
Issa
-
even seomoz.org is shown when you search it with site-parameter.
No error as long as it is not shown for search queries
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
-
Google Not Indexing Pages (Wordpress)
Hello, recently I started noticing that google is not indexing our new pages or our new blog posts. We are simply getting a "Discovered - Currently Not Indexed" message on all new pages. When I click "Request Indexing" is takes a few days, but eventually it does get indexed and is on Google. This is very strange, as our website has been around since the late 90's and the quality of the new content is neither duplicate nor "low quality". We started noticing this happening around February. We also do not have many pages - maybe 500 maximum? I have looked at all the obvious answers (allowing for indexing, etc.), but just can't seem to pinpoint a reason why. Has anyone had this happen recently? It is getting very annoying having to manually go in and request indexing for every page and makes me think there may be some underlying issues with the website that should be fixed.
Technical SEO | | Hasanovic1 -
How to prevent duplicat content issue and indexing sub domain [ CDN sub domain]?
Hello! I wish to use CDN server to optimize my page loading time ( MaxCDN). I have to use a custom CDN sub domain to use these services. If I added a sub domain, then my blog has two URL (http://www.example.com and http://cdn.example.com) for the same content. I have more than 450 blog posts. I think it will cause duplicate content issues. In this situation, what is the best method (rel=canonical or no-indexing) to prevent duplicate content issue and prevent indexing sub domain? And take the optimum service of the CDN. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
Website is not indexed in Google
Hi Guys, I have a problem with a website from a customer. His website is not indexed in Google (except for the homepage). I could not find anything that can possibly be the cause. I already checked the robots.txt, sitemap, and plugins on the website. In the HTML code i also couldn't find anything which makes indexing harder than usual. This is the website i am talking about: http://www.xxxx.nl/ (Dutch) The only thing that i am guessing now is the Google sandbox, but even that is quite unlikely. I hope you guys discover something i could not find! Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | B.Great0 -
I have altered a url as it was too long. Do I need to do a 301 redirect for the old url?
Crawl diagnostics has shown a url that is too long on one of our sites. I have altered it to make it shorter. Do I now need to do a 301 redirect from the old url? I have altered a url previously and the old url now goes to the home page - can't understand why. Anyone know what is best practice here? Thanks
Technical SEO | | kingwheelie0 -
What would happen if 301 redirects were not in place
Good Morning from 14 degrees C sunny Wetherby UK 🙂 My question is please.... "When a new site is given a total makover ie old urls are re written to radically different ones I know if you dont set up 301 redirects the infamous 404 error page will rear its head. But i wonder if 301 redirects were not configured how long on average does it take google to index the new site and serp links finally point to the new site". Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
Google Index Speed Opinions
Hello Everyone, Under normal circumstances, new posts to my site are indexed almost instantly by Google. I know this because an occasional search with quotation marks surrounding the 1st paragraph of text displays my newly published page. I use this tactic from time to time to ensure contributors aren't syndicating content. My question is this: I've noticed over the last day or so that my newly published articles are not yet indexed. For example, an article that was published over 24 hours ago does not appear to be indexed yet. Is this cause for concern? Is there an average wait time for indexation? XML issue? Thanks in advance for the help/insight.
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
301 Redirect Question
I'm working on a site that has a lot of indexed pages and backlinks to both domain.com and www.domain.com. Will using a 301 redirect to send domain.com to www.domain.com merge all of the indexed pages and links over to www.domain.com, thereby strengthening the www?
Technical SEO | | Yo_Adrian0 -
New Sub-domains or New Directories for 10+ Year Domain?
We've got a one-page, 10+ year old domain that has a 65/100 domain authority that gets about 10k page views a day (I'm happy to share the URL but didn't know if that's permitted). The content changes daily (it's a daily bible verse) so most of this question is focused on domain authority, not the content. We're getting ready to provide translations of that daily content in 4 languages. Would it be better to create sub-domains for those translations (same content, different language) or sub-folders? Example: http://cn.example.com
Technical SEO | | ipllc
http://es.example.com
http://ru.example.com or http://example.com/cn
http://example.com/es
http://example.com/ru We're able to do either but want to pick the one that would give the translated version the most authority both now and moving forward. (We definitely don't want to penalize the root domain.) Thanks in advance for your input.0