Changing domains - how long should a permanent redirect be set up?

[fargo1999]

After I change an old domain to a new domain, how long should I keep permanent forwarding to the new domain?

Is it enough for Google and other search engines to 'acknowledge' this fact once or I must keep this forwarding forever?

[Robert Charlton]

In the sense you're asking, forever.

If you remove the redirect, the engines don't remember that you once specified a redirect, nor would this be a wise way for them to operate. So you need to retain ownership of the old domain "forever," and to redirect it appropriately to your new domain "forever."

"Forever" here is defined as: as long as there's a link on the web or a favorite in someone's bookmarks to the old domain... or, putting it another way, as long as you care about what happens if there's a request for the old domain, and then some.

[g1smd]

It should be in place for at least the next decade at least. There are sporadic reports of Google coming back and checking out the status of URLs that haven't existed many years after page deletion.

[tangor]

Keep it in place until there are no more incoming from the old...whatever that time period might be.

[fargo1999]

Wow, so this is something very important to remember indeed..

One more question - I don't have to keep the old files on the old domain/server because redirect will be enough, correct? (as I know when spiders find redirect they follow this redirect only and don't try to scan if the actual old files still exist on the server)?

[g1smd]

When a URL that matches the pattern of URLs that should be redirected is requested, the server immediately sends the HTTP Header with the redirect information in it.

No attempt is made by the server to fulfill the request with any other sort of 'content'.

[fargo1999]

Thank you, that's all I wanted to confirm..

[Robert Charlton]

One more question - I don't have to keep the old files on the old domain/server because redirect will be enough, correct?

I'd give it some time before taking them down. I don't know whether you've made the move yet, and whether you're changing hosts or site design as well, but it sounds like you may be.

The important thing about this kind of move is to keep both the old and new sites up and operating while DNS propagation is taking place... and then give it some cushion. This should keep the propagation entirely seamless.

If you are changing hosts, note that you don't have to maintain two hosting accounts. You just change the old domain's A-records at your registrar's DNS to send requests for the old domain to the new IP. You then do all of your redirects on the new web hosting server.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:54 pm (utc) on June 6, 2009]

[fargo1999]

Hm, I didn't know at all about changing A-records and now after some reading I see it makes perfect sense (and I thought I'd have to keep two hosting accounts forever indeed :). Even though at worst I could set up the old domain as a domain addon on the new domain.. Either way I see Google has started to pick up the new domain already after about 2 weeks so it seems the process should be even smoother than I expected :. I noticed Bing is even faster and has most of the pages in their index right now.

[g1smd]

Yes, add the old domain as an add-on domain to your new site. Then set up a redirect so that if the old URLs are asked for, the site issues a redirect to the new URL.

There's little difference in redirecting old domain to new domain compared with redirecting non-www to www. You put all of those things in one .htaccess file, then point www and non-www for both domains to that one hosting account.

[fargo1999]

I went with 'no-www' version I think it looks better and the trend is to make everything shorter ;).

[g1smd]

I use the www in the URLs in the links on the site, but I promote the non-www offline elsewhere... the redirect gets the visitor to the right place should they type it in without the www.

When you use Google, do you type www.google.com/index.html or do you just type google.com ? Look what happens when you type the latter.

[Elsmarc]

The redirect can also be put in the apache .conf file instead of an .htaccess file. That's where I put mine. It is my understanding that this is less load on the server, but that may not be correct. I do know it's worked well for me for quite a few years.

[g1smd]

Yes, it is less load as it is compiled in when you restart the server. On the other hand, the .htaccess file is interpreted for each page view.