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Why is old site not being deindexed post-migration?
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We recently migrated to a new domain (16 days ago), and the new domain is being indexed at a normal rate (2-3k pages per day). The issue is the old domain has not seen any drop in indexed pages. I was expecting a drop in # of indexed pages inversely related to the increase of indexed pages on the new site. Any advice?
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Jarred,
Whenever you move to a new domain name Google will keep the old domain name indexed for up to a year (or longer!). It's just the way that Google does it, I suspect that it's because you may change your mind and go back to the old domain.
Having the old domain indexed in Google isn't a problem, as users should be redirected to the content on the new domain.
It will take up to a year for Google to stop indexing the old domain.
By the way, make sure you use the Google Change of Address Tool in Google Search Console, it will really help.
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We did some 301 redirects in early February. There are still some pages on the old domain hanging in the SERPs - however, the 301s are sending the traffic to the right place.
The more powerful your domain, the longer it can take for the pages to drop from the SERPs, because you have a lot of spiders coming in through existing links. Also, weak domains can take a long time to drop from the SERPs - they have lots of pages that are rarely crawled.
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Hi Jarred,
With regards to advice on this topic - what are you trying to accomplish?
Is the issue that you are using the same content for both sites and are worried about duplicate content?
If this is the case, a 301 redirect should solve your problems.
Have you stopped hosting on the old site?
If not it still exists as far as Google is concerned and you aren't going to see a de-indexation. Even if you have stopped hosting it can take months for Google to realize the site isn't there. Normally you start by seeing a few pages developing 400 errors before being removed completely. This isn't ideal as you are losing the link profile for these pages, hence the value of 301's.
Is it a 301 redirect situation?
If you are redirecting to the new domain, you are not going to de-index the old one. As far as Google is concerned it still exists and will continue to exist as long as it retains hosting.
In addition to above, de-indexation of a website can take months. We had this issue with a client we were transferring 300 domains for and it took about 2-3 months to see Google recognize the pages from the new websites and disregard the old ones. That being said, we were conducting redirects and the old pages never truly disappeared or de-indexed.
In short, 16 days probably isn't a long enough time frame to see any significant changes - if you are using 301's, this change won't happen at all. It doesn't mean anything negative from what you've described here.
If you want to fill me in on more details I'm happy to help as best I can.
Cheers,
Rob
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