Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I have made some research trying to find an accurate description on how we should merge multiple old domains into one single new domain but I had no luck.
I had made some merges in the past as below:
www.OldDomain1.com >> [301 page per page redirect] >> www.NewDomain.com
www.OldDomain2.com >> [301 page per page redirect] >> www.NewDomain.com
I got PR fully transferred in internal pages however in the homepage I got a PR split. Both OldDomain1.com and OldDomain2.com were PR5 and NewDomain.com became PR2.
What I would like to know (Matt Cutts could help us here) is how we should manage these migrations. I have read all the relevant documentation available and I haven't find one word about:
- when we should exchange the 301 by a 404/410;
- chained 301 redirects being (or not) better than the scheme I used ¦ chained 301 redirects --> www.OldDomain1.com >> [301 page per page redirect] >> www.OldDomain2.com >> [301 page per page redirect] >> www.NewDomain.com;
- opting to keep 301 redirects only in the main old domain and exchange the other 301 redirects by 404/410.
Did you find any final solution for these situations?
How long did it take to Google to list the brand new domain?
2 or 3 months. Yes, we were penalized. But that is not the subject of this topic.
Have the old urls disappeared from search results?
Yes.
Many experienced variuos problems while changing domain and redirecting with 301, maybe your new domain had been online for long before the change?
Despite "causes for penalties" are not the subject of this topic I can say that the new domain was +3 years old but has never been used. I guess our mistake was to have made the site available through the 3 domains during one week only. Only after that we've applied the 301 redirects scheme I presented you.
However this topic is not about penalties or errors. This topic is about the lack of documentation/intel about how should be manage domain redirects/migrations from multiple old domains to one new domain.
In a 1st step we know we must opt for pointing all the old domains to one new domain (tree scheme) or for using a serial scheme (OldDomain1 -> OldDomain2 -> OldDomain? -> NewDomain). Even at this step, we still are not sure about what's right (Googlewise)!
My main questions are about the 2nd step. We've applied one out of the two schemes and... What should we do after that (Googlewise)? Keep the 301 redirects forever? We know that would be non-sense... So what is acceptable/right/well done?
OK. I agree with you.
And after that? Should we keep the 301s forever? After some months (how many?) should we keep only one 301 redirect in the main OldDomain and change the other domains to 404s/410s? Or should we change all the 301s to 404s/410s at once?
