Website Disappeared after Domain Change !

8 replies
  • SEO
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Hi
Recently I bought an older domain for my website, I searched some tips on Google to find ' How to Change a domain without Losing Ranking ', the answer was I have to
301-redirect the domain1.com to the new domain2.com (and that's what I did),

next add domain2.com to webmaster tools,

then tell google through webmaster tools that you did change the domain.

Now 3-4 days passed and I don't find the domain1 neither the domain2 in Google for past already ranked keywords (even if I search "domain1.com" or "domain2.com"). Thus I lost visitors...


Is there anything I need to do !?
#change #disappeared #domain #website
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    A 301 redirect will only pass a percentage of the authority of the pages, so depending on the level of competition you are likely to lose some rankings.

    Also, you should not redirect the entire domain to the new domain. You need to 301 redirect every single page individually to the corresponding new page.

    Even after that, it is not unusual to disappear from the SERPs for a few days while Google figures it all out.
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    • Profile picture of the author razorif
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      Also, you should not redirect the entire domain to the new domain. You need to 301 redirect every single page individually to the corresponding new page.
      Yes, that's what I did, a 301 redirect using domain forwarding of the registrar. In other words, domain1.com/page.html leads directly to domain2.com/page.html

      I'm a little worried about the rankings I achieved since a year of working...
      I hope this problem gets fixed soon...
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by razorif View Post

        Yes, that's what I did, a 301 redirect using domain forwarding of the registrar. In other words, domain1.com/page.html leads directly to domain2.com/page.html

        I'm a little worried about the rankings I achieved since a year of working...
        I hope this problem gets fixed soon...
        So your .htaccess file has a separate 301 redirect listed for every single page of your site? If it was a 20 page site, there should be 20 301 redirects listed.

        If your site was ranking okay, I'm not sure why you bought another domain to redirect it to in the first place. That doesn't make much sense to me.
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        • Profile picture of the author razorif
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          If your site was ranking okay, I'm not sure why you bought another domain to redirect it to in the first place. That doesn't make much sense to me.
          I just said it, I bought an older domain, I wanted to target more competitive keywords because I'm actually targeting longtail keywords which don't bring a lot of traffic. That's my seo strategy...
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by razorif View Post

            I just said it, I bought an older domain, I wanted to target more competitive keywords because I'm actually targeting longtail keywords which don't bring a lot of traffic. That's my seo strategy...
            Assuming the domain has some value other than just being older (good links, etc.), I probably would have done it the other way around and redirected the older domain to your existing domain.
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            • Profile picture of the author razorif
              Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

              Assuming the domain has some value other than just being older (good links, etc.), I probably would have done it the other way around and redirected the older domain to your existing domain.
              Ahah, I knew you were going to say that. But what if I told you that the older website has more target keywords in the domain name along with authority compared to the current one?
              If it wasn't like that, I mainly go with your idea...
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              • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                Originally Posted by razorif View Post

                Ahah, I knew you were going to say that. But what if I told you that the older website has more target keywords in the domain name along with authority compared to the current one?
                If it wasn't like that, I mainly go with your idea...
                I do not think that keywords in the domain name play much of a role in ranking, so yeah, I would have done it the other way.

                Anyhow, I would give it a few days. If the 301 redirects were done properly, your rankings should reappear soon, but will most likely be lower than they were before you did the redirects.
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  • Profile picture of the author mkgg
    Google will take its sweet time and we are not talking about days but weeks to months for the whole site to move if you have a lot of pages.

    I redirected my domain from just www to the non-www version and it took months for all pages to show up the non-www version in SER even after i did the htaccess and google wmt right. So talking about a whole domain change, i think that ought to take more time than 3-4 days.

    By the way, i hope when you say
    Yes, that's what I did, a 301 redirect using domain forwarding of the registrar. In other words, domain1.com/page.html leads directly to domain2.com/page.html
    You don't mean just doing it from your registrar (godaddy etc) control panel and setting up a forwarder. You actually have to put up a htaccess file on your old domain that will 301 redirect to new domain, that is the only way google will receive the 301 message.
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