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    4. Google is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place

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    Google is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place

    Technical SEO
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    • iQi
      iQi last edited by

      Hi there,

      You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first.

      A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com"

      The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx

      HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently => 
      Cache-Control => private
      Content-Length => 174
      Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
      Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
      Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
      X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
      X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
      X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
      Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
      Connection => close

      Does the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago.

      Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain!

      Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening.

      Best,

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • NickSamuel
        NickSamuel last edited by

        Hi Issa,

        This is a great question and something I actually asked Gary Illyes of Google on his Google AMA.

        For me the site:olddomain.com has been inconsistent; sometimes with domain name migrations everything tidies up within a few weeks, other times it lingers like Andreas' fantastic example of SEO Moz.

        Anyway, Gary said "You don't need to do anything. We're simply surfacing the old URLs to... Not confuse users i guess? Honestly, that URL we show in the results are sometimes fairly useless, maybe we should test again what happens if we remove them" From the answer I think Gary is trying to imply that keeping rankings whilst showing old domain is done to keep things familiar for users.

        Regarding the index returned during a site search, I understand this is historic.

        Here's the link for the full question and context: https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/ao3fmk/i_am_gary_illyes_googles_chief_of_sunshine_and/eg1lps1/

        Hope this helps slightly!

        Nick

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • iQi
          iQi @paints-n-design last edited by

          Thank you Andreas,

          But is the redirect HTTP Header reading correct or not?

          Also, site:seomoz.com is showing a very small number of pages, while my clients old website is all appearing on Google. Every single page.

          Issa

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • paints-n-design
            paints-n-design last edited by

            even seomoz.org is shown when you search it with site-parameter.
            No error as long as it is not shown for search queries

            iQi 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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