Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How long does it take for rank to return after 301?
-
Hello all -- just looking for those who have implemented site-wide 301 redirects due to a domain change. I am about 2 weeks into mine and am seeing minimum 5, maximum 21 spot drops in many of my targeted terms. My pages have strong GPR, with most being 3 or higher.
Anyone out there been able to track a ballpark of when rank will return? The 301 redirects were implemented correctly, with 1 to 1 setups in most cases. Google has updated the listings with the new domain name, but I'm taking a huge rank hit.
Any experience on how long I can expect (I know it's different for every situation) would be great!
Thanks.
-
Hi Robert -
Yes we did it on the URL level, but the client is using IIS as opposed to Apache, so we had to figure out a way to use a global 301 that trickled down to the page level. Each page is redirecting to it's new home on the server side (www.oldsite-innerpage.com to www.newsite-innerpage.com). We actually ended up with a global re-write rule that still allowed it to be a page-level redirect. Eventually we will be going into IIS and writing in server-side 301's for each individual page. It's been 2 weeks so I'm hoping to see return of rank here in 2 weeks time or so. Thanks for your input.
-
Bandicoot,
From what you have written I am assuming your "Site-wide 301 redirects" means you did it from url to url and not from home page to home page or root to root, etc.
We made the mistake of assuming on a site a few months ago and could not understand what happened. Mozzers pointed out we did not go url to url and we made the change. Most were cautious suggesting it would take 4 to 6 weeks, but we actually saw about 90% within 3 weeks of the change. This was a change from NamedLawfirm.com to City-Bankruptcy-Attorneys.com so I was impressed with the rapidity.Good luck
-
I think that was a very general comment, as some pages are crawled very rarly, as for passing pr and signals, it has been confirmed by Matt Cutts that 301's leak goodness
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml
-
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/012409.html --"From Google: 301s pass PR and related signals appropriately. Usually takes a couple of weeks for things to smooth out, though."
-
i would give it another 2 weeks at least, but as i suggested, it may not get back to where it was as a 301 is not as fgood as a direct link
-
Hi Adrian - thanks for your reply. for client privacy purposes I cannot reveal the site.
-
I'd have to say that when we went through our domain change, we forgot to initialize the 301 redirect so we got penalized for 6 weeks until we caught it; however, it's not like we had some big stuff between newglobalventures.com and www.newglobalventures.com.
Just out of curiousity which is the site that you're experiencing loss on?
-Adrian
-
no, the old site is not showing on the SERP anymore, and no, there were no 301's to the old site
-
Yes i have done this a few times, and i suggest at least a month or more. 301's do not pass all goodness to the new page they leak a little each time. If you had 301's on the old site already you may of lost them or they maybe double hoping.
Is the old domain name still in search resulst?
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
-
How effective are 301 redirects in passing page rank?
I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new. In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL. What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side? Thanks
Technical SEO | May 22, 2022, 1:51 PM | CitimarineMoz0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | Jan 7, 2017, 3:01 PM | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
How Long To Recover Rankings After Multi-Day Site Outage?
Hi, A site we look after for a client was down for almost 3 days at the start of this month (11th - 14th of May, to be exact). This was caused by my client's failure to verify their domain name in accordance with the new ICANN procedures. The details are unimportant, but it took a long while for them to get their domain name registration contact details validated, hence the outage. Very soon after this down time we noticed that the site has slipped back in the Google rankings for most of the target keywords, sometimes quite considerably. I guess this is Google penalizing this client for their failure to keep their site live. (And they really can't have too many complaints about this, in my opinion). The good news is that the rankings show signs of improving again slightly. However, they have not recovered all the way to where they were before the outage, two weeks ago. My question is this ... do you expect that the site will naturally re-gain the previous excellent rankings without us doing anything? If so, how long do you estimate this could take? On the other hand, if Google typically penalizes this kind of error by 'permanently', is there is anything we can do to help signal to Google that the site deserves to get back up to where is used to be? I am keen to get your thoughts, and especially to hear from anyone who has faced a similar problem in the past. Thanks
Technical SEO | May 28, 2014, 8:14 AM | smaavie0 -
CNAME vs 301 redirect
Hi all, Recently I created a website for a new client and my next job is trying to get them higher in Google. I added them in OSE and noticed some strange backlinks. To my surprise the client has about 20 domain names. All automatically poiting to (showing) the same new mainsite now. www.maindomain.nl www.maindomain.be
Technical SEO | Aug 19, 2013, 12:24 PM | Houdoe
www.maindomain.eu
www.maindomain.com
www.otherdomain.nl
www.otherdomain.com
... Some of these domains have backlinks too (but not so much). I suggested to 301 redirect them all to the main site. Just to avoid duplicate content. But now the webhoster comes into play: "It's a problem, client has only 1 hosting account, blablabla...". They told me they could CNAME the 20 domains to the main domain. Or A-record them to an IP address. This is too technical stuff for me. So my concrete questions are: Is it smart to do anything at all or am I just harming my client? The main site is ranking pretty well now. And some backlinks are from their copy sites (probably because everywhere the logo links to the full mainsite url). Does the CNAME or A-record solution has the same effect as a 301 redirect, from SEO perspective? Many thanks,
Hans0 -
301 Redirect with index.asp
I am very new to all of this so forgive the newbie questions I will get better. Ok so after starting a campaign I see that I have many issues including where some pages are being deemed as duplicate content. 1. The report says the http://lucid8.com has duplicate content on 2 other pages 2. When I look at them it shows that http://lucid8.com/index.asp and http://www.lucid8.com are duplicates. 3. Really these are the exactly the same page because the default page that is opened for www.lucid8.com http://www.lucid8.com etc always opens the index.asp page. 4. Now I read that I should do permanent redirects and how to do this via IIS and I tried to do a redirect from index.asp to www.lucid8.com but that does not work because www.lucid8.com is pointing to index.asp and so we end up in a circle. So the question is how do I get rid of these duplicate page references without causing problems. Thanks
Technical SEO | Apr 25, 2013, 5:49 PM | TroyW0 -
301 redirect from Blogger
Hello, I have a client with a Wordpress network of blogs, each blog is owned by a different blogger. Many of them were migrated time ago from Blogger. I have seen that the way used to redirect them is a meta refresh, so no authority is being passed. I cannot find any reliable way of making a 301 from Blogger, There are some plugins, but I'm afraid of using them. Any of you have experience with this situation please? I have even thought about placing a global rel canonical before the meta refresh, but I think that here the problem is the meta refresh itself.... Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | Jan 16, 2013, 4:33 AM | Juandbbam0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | Sep 18, 2011, 2:39 PM | steffen_0 -
Does a CDN affect search rankings?
I feel kind of stupid asking this, but if i use one it would speed things up quite a bit. It is for a ecommerce website, any guidance on this would be awesome!
Technical SEO | Aug 2, 2012, 5:57 AM | Hyrule0