Google, URLs and redirects

moving one.two.com to one.com in Google

[btas2]

As a historical legacy, all of my web pages can be accessed using the URL "mysite.anothersite.com", even though they are actually located at "mysite.com". This resulted from the fact that "mysite.anothersite.com" was my original site before I obtained the "mysite" domain and transferred all the files. That was maybe 5 or 6 years ago

However Google still seems to like to use the "mysite.anothersite.com" URL. I have top ranked pages listed using that scheme. They do use "mysite.com" as well, but even new pages sometimes show up as "mysite.anothersite.com" when they were created on "mysite.com". Obviously Google crawls "mysite.anothersite.com" and finds the new material on "mysite.com". Why one should rank higher than the other, I have no idea of course!

I'd like to get them listed as "mysite.com" for two reasons. First, I can't depend on "anothersite.com" permanently redirecting URLs. They may go out of business, change ownership and policies or they may just get tired of doing the redirectes. Second, I'd rather have my own site branding.

Does anyone know how to get Google to switch these domain names WITHOUT disturbing search engine ranking? I'd hate for them to disappear from Google listing just because I tried to mess with them!

I could get "anothersite.com" to stop the redirects, but that would probably break a bunch of external links, and might result in Google dropping my search engine listings. I'd rather have "mysite.anothersite.com" in the search results than no listing at all!

[Marcia]

Is your redirect a 301 or 302?

[btas2]

Since I have no access to "anothersite.com" I don't know how they are doing the redirect. I also have to admit that I'm not up to speed on redirects and the differences between a 301 and 302 redirect.

Which one would be preferred in this situation? From my reading of other threads here - and with my limited knowledge of redirects - it looks like maybe "anothersite.com" should be using a 301 redirect to send traffic from "mysite.anothersite.com" to "mysite.com"? Would that (eventually) stop Google from crawling "mysite.anysite.com" and index all pages only under "mysite.com"?

[g1smd]

A 302 redirect says that the page has moved temporarily - so the search engine will continue to list the old URL forever.

A 301 redirect says that the old page is gone from here, gone for ever, and points the browser to the new location. The search engine should index the new location and forget all about the old one - but it can take a couple of months for that to happen.

Use an online HTTP header sniffer to verify what happens, and which status code is returned, for each different version of the site - old and new location, both with and without a www at the beginning. It should be a 301 redirect.

You said that even new pages were showing up as the old URL. That should be impossible. Something is wrong with the way things are set up.