Webmaster tools change of addresss
-
Hi Mozzers,
I am about to move a load of content from one site to another and switch off the first site. I've got all my 301s mapped and ready to go. My gosh, that's one heck of a piece of work - it better be worth it
I have been looking at Webmaster Tools Change of address. I want to know which site do I choose to change the address to? I have three versions of my site in webmaster tools:
- the ssl version (https)
- the non-ssl version (http)
- No www. in front
My site has a sitewide SSL certificate (company policy - personally, I'd only have it on the parts that need it, but life's too short for some battles...) so should I send everything to the https version? My instinct says the https version but I really can't afford to get this wrong.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Please help!
Thank you,
Amelia xx
-
Thank you Chris.
I appreciate you taking the time to answer this question for me.
Best wishes,
Amelia
-
No problem at all. Good luck with the move
-Andy
-
If you've verified them all you can also tell Google your preferred version thus avoiding the headache as it would only use that one version and you wouldn't have to worry about three of them.
how to : https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/44231?hl=en
-
Hi Jstrong,
I have a cousin called J strong! I don't suppose you are the same person, but if you are, Hi James!!!
Thank you for pointing this out, yes it is very important to have a preferred domain set. I'm just about to double-check that I have done it.
Have a great day
Amelia xx
-
Thank you, you have confirmed my thinking on this. I will choose the https version.
I'm OCD and have verified all versions of my site in webmaster tools... Is this normal? I thought it was better to have and not need than not have and need... if you know what I mean?
Thanks again for responding, it's very kind and helpful of you to do so. I hope you are having a lovely day
Amelia
-
Hello,
Yes sounds like you need to redirect to the https: version. One thing to keep in mind though is to also set your preferred domain once the change is complete. Is the new site going to be https://www.domain.com or https://domain.com? Make sure the preferred domain matches this along with any redirects that are setup. It's important to be consistent.
-
Hi Amelia,
Which version of the site is it that has been verified in Webmaster tools? Google will see each as a separate site, so my guess will be that you need to choose the https.
-Andy
-
Use the site that you want to be your main url
so if you direct all your visitors to just htttp:www. use that
remember you also don't need to do it all at once you can migrate over time to help ease Google into it a bit more and help you not loose as much traffic in one go.
Hope it helps.
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
-
Blogspot blog is subdomain, but domain is changing - How will this affect backlinks?
Hi Moz community, I appreciate the title is confusing, so let me explain. We use blogspot to host our blog. It's set up as a subdomain of our website. Let's call it: lovelyblog.lovelytraining.com Our website, in this example, is **lovelytraining.com ** We're migrating our website to a new domain: lovely.training We'll be redirecting everything on the primary website, so our link profile won't be lost. However, as the blog is hosted on blogspot, we'll lose links pointed to the blog. The blog would remain lovelyblog.lovelytraining.com - but our website would now be lovely.training The question is, has anyone migrated/redirected a blogspot blog in this way, to retain links? Secondly, is there another way we can tell Google that this is blog should be treated as a subdomain of our website? I'm sure I'm missing out something stupid, so don't go easy on me! Thanks all.
Web Design | | RobertChapman0 -
Any second opinions as to why our organic search website traffic hasn't recovered from website rebrand (domain change, website redesign)?
I am hoping to see if anyone in the Moz community would be able to help troubleshoot or lend any advice on a major organic search traffic issue we've been experiencing over the last 8 months. In a nutshell, we decided our ~4.5-year-old business needed to undergo a rebrand in October 2015. After changing domains & redesigning our website (more below), our search-driven sessions have dropped 20% in 2016 v.s. 2015. We made quite a few on-site modifications (with some success) post-redesign but are still deep in a rut and not sure what more we can do to recover. I've listed my theories below as to why we're still suffering this hit. If anyone could weigh in on these and/or share any other troubleshooting ideas, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it (and owe you a lunch/beverage of your choice the next time I'm in your city!). ****Backlinks - despite our efforts to 301 all links, I sense we have lost many backlinks. According to Open Site Explorer, our old domain has 1,172 backlinks (some from some very authoritative pages domains), 1,068 of which are passing link equity. In contrast, our new domain has 367 backlinks, 321 are passing link equity, and very few overlap with our old domain. Domain Age - we may have lost much of our reputation with Google as our new domain is much younger than our old domain (1-year-old v.s. 5.5 years old). Domain Name - although I thought to have common keywords in one's domain was a myth, I am now questioning that belief. Our old domain contained a popular, topical keyword and our new domain is derived from a term that is topical, but very uncommon. New URLs - our developer has insisted all links were moved to the new domain, but I have a hunch they were not. When conducting a "site search" (i.e. "site:websitename.com"), the new domain returns 7,740 results. Prior to our switch, a site search with the old domain yielded 30,000+ results. 404s - we found and fixed 100-200 404'd links after the domain switch. We still see a few pop-up today and I'm wondering if this is a red flag in Google's eyes. For a little more background too, here are the nitty gritty details with a rough timeline: Pre-October 12, 2015 - registered new domain and designed the new website on Wordpress, while researching a range of articles and resources for a successful site migration (e.g. this and this Moz guide). October 12, 2015 - flipped the switch on the website design, domain, minor content reorganization, and social handles. We announced the change to our audience via an article, newsletter, and social; informed Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) of the new address, 301'd all links from the old to the new domain, and submitted new sitemap in GWT. October 12 - 16, 2015 - traffic is normal, everything seems to be okay. October 17, 2015 - search traffic drops by 54% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. October 26, 2015 - search traffic rises, so now only down by 30% v.s. the same day of week pre-rebrand. November/December 2015 - re-added numerous elements from the old website such as category, tag, and page pagination and a few sidebar modules that linked to other important pages and tags. Search traffic rises slightly in November (down 27% year-on-year), dips again in December (down 31% year-on-year). January 2016 - today (June 17, 2016) - we published more content on a daily basis and search traffic fluctuates around the 20% versus the same period in 2015. January 2016 - down 23% year-on-year February 2016 - down 17% year-on-year March 2016 - down 20% year-on-year April 2016 - down 21% year-on-year May 2016 - down 21% year-on-year June 2016 (until the 17th) - down 23% year-on-year Thank you all in advance for your time and help, please let me know if you have any questions!
Web Design | | nick490 -
Changing top level navigation between site sections
We've got an internal proposal to change our top level nav depending on the section of the site. For example, on our homepage it might read: Products, Library, About with relevant links dropping down below. As we have varied products, the drop down underneath it would include the various families. When arriving on the product family page the top-level nav would change to represent more specific offerings. For example: xxx.com 1. Products; 2. Library; 3. About xxx.com/xxx 1. Product family 1; 2. Product family 2; 3. Product family 3; 4. Library; 5. About What are the SEO/UX implications of this? It seems confusing but allows more specific navigation via the main nav depending on the section of the site. Also it seems that an alternating TLN might not be too Google-friendly.
Web Design | | gwelch0 -
Help, site traffic has dropped significantly since we changed from http to https
Heya, so I am just in charge of the content on the site, and the SEO content, not the actual back-end stuff. A little under 2 weeks ago we switched to https, and our site traffic has been down a lot ever since. When I SERP check our keywords, they don't seem to have dropped in rankings pages. Here is what I got when I asked our dev guy if 301 redirects were put in: I did not add any redirects so all of the content is accessible on both unless individual links get hardcoded one way or the other. The only thing in place is a Cloudflare plugin which rewrites links in cached pages to match the way its accessed, so if for example you access a page over https you don’t get the version cached with a bunch of http links since that will throw up mixed content warnings in the browser. Other than that WP mostly generates all its links to match whatever protocol you are accessing the current page with. We can make specific pages redirect one way or the other in the future if we want to though... As a startup, site traffic is a metric we track to gouge progress, and so I really need to get to the bottom of if it was the change from http to https that has causes the drop, and if so, what can we do about it? Also, in case it is relevant: the bounce rate is now sky high (ave. 15% to 64% this last week!) Any help is very welcome! Site: https://mobileday.com Thank you!
Web Design | | MobileDay1 -
Links not visible in "Google cache text version" but visible in "Fetch as Google" in Webmaster tool
Hi Guys, There seems some issue with the coding due to which Google is not indexing half of our menu bar links. The cached text version of http://www.99acres.com/ is not showing links present in dropdown "All India" , dropdown "Advice" and "Hot Projects" tab in blue bar on top menu whereas these links are visible in "Fetch as Google" in Google Webmaster tool. Any clue to why is there a difference between the links shown in Google webmaster and Google cache text version. Thanks in advance 🙂
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
URLs appear in Google Webmaster Tools that I can't find on my own site?!?
Hi, I have a Magento e-commerce site (clothing) and when I had a look through some of the sections in Google Webmaster Tools I found URLs that I can't find on my site. For example, a product url maybe http://www.example.co.uk/product-url/ which is fine. In that product there maybe three sizes of the product (Small, Medium, Large) and for some reason Googlebot is sometimes finding a url like: http://www.example.co.uk/product-url/1202/ has been found and when clicked on is a live url (Status code: 200) with is one of the sizes (medium). However I have ran a site crawl in Screaming Frog and other crawl tests and can't seem to find where Googlebot is finding these URLs. I think I need to: 1. Find how Googlebot is finding these urls? 2. Find out how to keep out of index (e.g. robots.txt, canonical etc.... Any help would be much appreciated and I'm happy to share the URL with members if they think they can have a look and help with this problem. I can share specific URLs which might make the issue seem clearer, let me know? Thanks, Darrell
Web Design | | clickyleap0 -
How to verify http://bizdetox.com for google webmaster tools
Hey guys i tried to to make a Preferred Domain choice in webmaster tools, but it is not allowing me to save my choice bec its asking me to verify that i own http://bizdetox.com How do i go about doing that and what are the steps I have already verified www.bizdetox.com
Web Design | | BizDetox0 -
Do I need to redirect soft 404s that I got from Google Webmaster Tools?
Hi guys, I got almost 1000+ soft 404s from GWT. All of the soft 404s produce 200 HTTP status code but the URLs are something like the following: http://www.example.com/search/house-for-rent (query used: house for rent) http://www.example.com/search/-----------rent (query used:-------rent) There are no listings that match these queries and there is an advanced search that is visible in these pages. Here are my questions: 1. Do I need to redirect each page to its appropriate landing page? 2. Do I need to add user sitemap or a list of URLs where they can search for other properties? Any suggestions would help. 🙂
Web Design | | esiow20130