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Thank you!  This is exactly the information I was looking for - gives me the perfect place to start.  I really appreciate it!

You're right, and thanks for the confirmation!

On the subject of redirects - am I correct in assuming that a general redirect is impossible (as it would redirect all traffic, even "legit" traffic to the new site), and that we'd have to create a 301 for each page?

Thank you for answering my questions / confirming my suspicions. Being that this is an extremely inadvisable situation to get yourself into, there's really just not a lot of info/advice out there, even if it's just to tell you that  you're SOL!

Hey all,

A client finally sold a domain name after being harassed to sell for many years, without talking to us about it first. They moved the site to a new domain, and the purchasing company took over the original domain. Then they called me, wondering why the site is no longer showing up in Google.

I've done some initial research, and everything I find for advice assumes that you have control over the original domain.  We don't.  I'm hoping someone here has some creative advice, so we don't have to start from the beginning, and/or painfully update links we've acquired.

My only thought was that the new company may be kind enough to post 301's for us if we provided them....

Any thoughts / advice / life rings will be greatly appreciated!