Alias Domain Names and 301 Redirects

Alias redirected to parent, but alias still shows in serp

[ptietze]

My client's company is the result of a number of mergers and acquisitions. Their current website covers all the former companies, and they shut down the old individual company sites sometime ago. As a result, they have quite a number of domain names, which had all been pointed to a single IP address at the DNS level using separate A Records. The domain names include the old legacy companies and some niche names.

Search engine results are showing one of the old domain names rather than the domain name of the parent company. In order to correct this and to avoid search engine penalties, 301 redirects were used to redirect all the old domain names to the parent company domain name. This was done back on March 11. There are, however,lots of inbound links still using the old domain name.

The site has been visited daily by the google bot since the change but the serps still show the old domain name. How long will it take for the parent domain name to appear?

[ptietze]

I should done some reading before posting. I just found two posts that answered my question.

www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/12327.htm
www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/12327.htm

The concensus seems to be that it will take 2 or more cycles for the new domain name to show up. Also that the inbound links will be handled by the 301 redirects.

[jdMorgan]

ptietze,

I'd give it another two update cycles before becoming too concerned.

It would be a good idea to request those old inbounds be updated to point to the new domain. Of course, you'll never get them all, but from my experience, a polite and recipient-specific request sent once a month over a three month period will get a good number of them. By that I mean, tell the recipient the your old URL, your new URL, and most importantly, the URL on his/her site which has your old URL link on it. Make it easy for them, and they are much more likely to update it for you. Yes, it's a lot of work for you.

Best,
Jim