Google Crawler and DNS Alias? Pointer?

[Lynard]

Hello,

We recently had to change high ranking site to another domain name because it had the product manufacturer's name in it, which they didnt like. Now when you go to the old address it goes to an alias site or it forwards/points to the new site. Now the old site has fallen off google's top ten for the last few weeks. I had worked really hard to get a high ranking with all the tips I have read from the majestically smart people on this forum.

The last couple of weeks I have been trying to find information everywhere on how google handles this situation. What does the crawler do? will the old domain name drop off google? will it penalize me for forwarding the page to another site?

Any input would be of great help. Thank You!

Regards,
Linn

[edited by: Marcia at 7:30 pm (utc) on June 17, 2003]

[korkus2000]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld,

How are you fowarding the site 301 redirect, 302 redirect? Have you started getting links changed so they point to the new domain?

[Lynard]

I talked to our IT person. He says that the site is just an alias. Now the old address and the new address point to the same location? He says that he doesnt think that it is a redirect. As for the links, yes I have changed them all to go to the new site address.

[mcavic]

If it's a DNS alias, then both domains point to the same site. Search engines won't know which is the old domain and which is the new, but will see them as duplicate sites.

The proper thing to do would be make the old domain redirect to the new one using a 301 permanent redirect. That way, spiders will realize what's going on, and human visitors will see the new URL also.

Or, you could make the old domain a separate site with just a page saying that the site has moved and please update your bookmarks/links. That way, it'll be even more obvious to people, and spiders will still figure it out.

If the content is the same, and everybody updates their links, you should get your ranking back eventually.