Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
About 10 days ago I changed the domain name to a more generic one, moved all the content across and put a 301 redirect on the old domain, as I understood this was the SE-friendly way to change domains.
(It may be worth pointing out that the new domain was previously owned and I picked it up when its registration expired and it dropped from the registry.)
I have made some minor changes to the site since I changed domain, and today I discovered that my most obvious search term (the company name) is returning both the new domain's home page (at no.1) and the old domain's home page (at no.5) in G's SERPS.
I thought I would post a message about this as it seems a strange result, and ask if anyone knows why this is happening and whether there's a danger of a duplicate content penalty, since the site's content is almost exactly the same as before?
As only 10 days have passed I wonder whether Google might work out what's going on and remove the old URL given more time. Does anyone have any experience of this happening before?
So long as when you visit those pages, you do get forwarded to the 'new' domain - if not, then the 301 is wrong.
The 'old' results will linger for a while- but, so long as there is a new page to be found, it will very quickly be listed above the older one (where both are listed) until the old one falls out.
But do check the 301 to remove all worry :)
It would appear the ranking of the old domain has been transferred (at least in part) to the new domain, as the new domain now ranks better than the old one ever did.
[edited by: tedster at 1:37 pm (utc) on July 16, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] turn off smile face graphics [/edit] [/edit][/1]
