PR Loss of 10% - 20% After Moving Domain Is a Myth

[deeper]

Hi,
usually it is said that a loss of about 10 - 20 % of your PR is "normal" after moving your site to new URLs.

John Müller from Google Switzerland today said, webmaster should not stick to this widely spread numbers. In most cases the loss is far less than 10 or 20%: only 1 - 2 % due to single links which can not technically properly redirected to the new domain.

Every webmaster can reduce the loss of PR by correcting the URLs of his backlinks as far as possible.

I just like to share this, because for many years, again and again people mention "10 or 20%".
With usually 1 or 2% loss of PR certainly is no reason to avoid a move and fear loose rankings.

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Mods note:
Deeper had provided some additional info which I am adding here:

John Mueller has said the above during the today's Hangout in German Language. For German speakers, the recording is here:

https://plus.google.com/events/cnt2vcm01m36somnv6g0ni8oceg [plus.google.com]

In the recording, the question starts at 36:51 and the answer is at 37:40. John Mueller also mentioned Google has made a good progress in dealing with moves especially in the last 12 months.
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[edited by: aakk9999 at 4:01 pm (utc) on Sep 25, 2014]
[edit reason] Added additional info [/edit]

[aakk9999]

Many thanks for posting this info!

I have moved domains many times with no problems. If all that is happening is replacing one domain name with another, then this is a fairly low risk excercise which includes one-to-one URL redirects.

Many times when the problems were reported after the domain move, one or more of the following has happened too:

redirects old-to-new-url were not implemented properly

there were some other technical errors during the move

there was more than just a domain name change, e.g. the site was redesigned or structurally changed at the same time

The domain move can even result in ranking / traffic improvement if, as a part of domain move, all old URLs that were previously mistakenly leaked but were not meant to be known to Google are let go 404 on the old domain (and not redirected) and a care is taken for these not to leak under the new domain name.

Every webmaster can reduce the loss of PR by correcting the URLs of his backlinks as far as possible.

This is an important point. Contacting sites linking to you (especially authority sites) and getting them to change their links to point directly to the new domain increases the trust and reduces PR leak down to 0% for these links.

[philgames]

"Every webmaster can reduce the loss of PR by correcting the URLs of his backlinks as far as possible. "

But couldn't that result in google nulling the links like they say happens when anchor text is changed?

<snip>

[edited by: aakk9999 at 4:55 pm (utc) on Sep 25, 2014]
[edit reason] ToS [/edit]

[deeper]

Anchor and URL are different things. Even if you are right regarding anchor it shouldn't be the same with changing URLs.
If the URL is wrong and does not lead your visitors to the right site, you have to correct the URL. Quite usual matter and no reason to devalue the link in my eyes.

Where and when did G say they devalue links after changing anchor?

[goodroi]

I don't think Google has officially said that changing anchor text devalues links. I do think that messing around with old backlinks may impact their value in the short term so you don't want to do it for no good reason. I haven't tested this in a long time, so I'm not sure if it has changed.

Try not to change domains. If you have to change domains, plan it all out first. Then double-check your plan, because your probably made a mistake or forgot something. Then follow the plan and double-check everything is done right. I have seen some epic mistakes like a 7 layer string of 302 redirects & java script.

[deeper]

In my case domain will stay the same, but the URLs of all pages probably will change, loosing extensions.

Mistakes, yes, as aakk9999 already mentioned... obviously there are many things which may go wrong, mainly with big and complex sites. JM mentioned geo-targeting.

[aakk9999]

JM mentioned geo-targeting.

Yes, I can see how this can be easily forgotten and then have a negative effect. For example:

- the old domain is ccTLD, the new one is not. You need to geotarget the new one
- the old domain is gTLD and the new one is ccTLD. You cannot remove geotargetting from ccTLD, it geotargets automatically.
- both domains are gTLD, but you forgot that the old one is geotargetted so you do not geotarget the new one after the move

[deeper]

Sometimes the use of canonical and noindex causes severe problems after move. For example you had a testing installation, which shouldn't be indexed. After going live you forget to remove noindex/nofollow.

Btw, how long do you keep the 301 in the htaccess?
In theory it should be "for ever", because you never know all the backlinks and other sources using old URLs.

[netmeg]

In general I have no problem keeping 301s around forever.

[EditorialGuy]

In general I have no problem keeping 301s around forever.

At the opposite extreme, some big organizations (whose Web designers should know better) change domains or URL structures without redirecting at all. I know of several national tourist offices that have changed domains several times without redirecting. The user types in "visitelbonia.com" and gets an error message instead of being redirected to "elboniathefunplace.org."

[Robert Charlton]

In general I have no problem keeping 301s around forever.

It's important to note, though, that if you're moving from an old domain to a new domain, to keep the redirect around forever, you also need to keep control of the old domain forever.

I know netmeg knows this, as do most experienced webmasters... but there are many others who don't. You cannot simply assume that Google "remembers" 301s. You've got to keep olddomain.tld registered, and you've got to maintain the redirect in your .htaccess.

There are many developers and IT people who are absolutely clueless about proper redirection... whether involving domain change or url change within the same domain. Don't depend on your hosting company to get it right either.

[deeper]

You've got to keep olddomain.tld registered

Good hint!
In my case domain does not change, but after long research I will drop .html for page-URLs voluntary. I think keeping the domain simplifies several things, otherwise I wouldn't do it.

Hard to believe that even "profs" don't know about 301...

[FranticFish]

I would add a word of caution based on experiences with a move last year.

I gave some advice on a domain move when a company rebranded from a .com (which contained a useful keyword) to a .co (which didn't).

They had a guide on what to do from me, and also one from another SEO to hedge their bets. Their own devs were capable and didn't compromise any of the recommendations. They implemented redirects properly server-side (no multiple hops, no catch-alls etc).

However they dropped SERP placement significantly across the board and saw a traffic reduction of 40% within 7 days of the switch. There were no Google updates around this time, there were no changes on the site, and they even picked up some PR links from the move because the domain purchase was notable.

I did an urgent double check of implementation and it was sound.

The only things I can think of was either the absence of a keyword in a domain or moving from an old .com to a young .co (albeit with a spotless ownership history) but the website lost trust - permanently.

[deeper]

Or quite normal - wait at least 4 weeks.

Sometimes sites need 3 months in order to recover, but usually it needs about 4 weeks.

[phranque]

looks like it's been well over 3 months

...experiences with a move last year.

[aakk9999]

moving from an old .com to a young .co

If all was technically correct then it seems a trust issue (unless the site is so big that Google is still sorting it out).

A few thoughts: is the WhoIs the same between .com and .co? Did they add both domains to the same WMT and used Site Move option there? Were there any other changes done at the same time (e.g. redesign or information architecture change?)

[FranticFish]

is the WhoIs the same between .com and .co

Yes, although I didn't consider this at the time. I take it you consider this worth doing?

Did they add both domains to the same WMT and used Site Move option there?

Yes.

Were there any other changes done at the same time

No, nothing whatsoever.

[aakk9999]

is the WhoIs the same between .com and .co

Yes, although I didn't consider this at the time. I take it you consider this worth doing?

I normally do this, yes, as Google said they may reset the signals if the domain ownership changes.

from a .com (which contained a useful keyword) to a .co (which didn't)

Considering your other replies above, the only other thing I can think of is that losing the keyword in domain name had a negative effect, less because of EMD, but more because it maybe changed how the anchor text of old links is looked at after the domain move.

This is my theory:

If you have a naked link to a keyword-rich domain, this type of link is still seen as a naked "domain name" type of link.

But if you change the domain to be something else and redirect these old links, they may suddenly became "rich anchor" types of links since they do have keywords in it, but the link is not equal to a domain name it points to via the redirect. So I am wondering whether perhaps some kind of OOP kicked in?

[FranticFish]

Thanks for your thoughts on this - definitely more things to bear in mind for any further moves.

[samwest]

I simply changed over to CMS from html and man did I get clobbered. Dropped about 50%-90% or traffic. Daily monitoring of any stray 301's yet sites continues to slip.

Anyone find that rich snippets help at all? Didn't use this when I was using html site, but now G WMT is reporting a lot of errors on the structured data page. Never simpler, always more complicated.

[aakk9999]

@samwest, in another thread [webmasterworld.com...] you said you went from 70 pages to 300 pages during that CMS change which is different than just changing the domain.

So you (probably) changed URLs but (from your posts) you have not changed a domain name. Another factor is that your site after the changeover to CMS is four times bigger than your static html site, which could be culprit for your ranking drops.

The advice for domain changeover (especially if the current site is ranking well and has a good traffic) is to try to keep the path part of URLs the same and site structure the same, and then redirect the same URL to the same URL. In this case it is easier for Google to figure out that the only thing changed is a domain name.

If there are further changes needed, it is advisable to do them as a next step, to be done once Google processes domain name change and renkings stabilise.

However, if the site is not ranking well and has no much SERPs traffic, then there is no much to lose to do all at once (change domain name and change site structure, add extra content etc).

Each site move has to be analysed and the strategy decided on its own merit.

[samwest]

Each site move has to be analysed and the strategy decided on its own merit.

During Y2k, I was working for a industrial controls company. Some sites had 50 or more Sun workstations and hundreds of control processors. Those upgrades where a CAKEWALK compared to moving from html to CMS and trying to get the same results as before. It's a fools errand to try to out smart the black box.

To be more clear...I had 70 pages of html in the root AND 230 posts and pages in WP as /blog. I attempted to merge the 70 pages into WP as pages, letter for letter. I also removed all the html and moved WP into the root. Just giving as many details as possible to help anyone else avoid the same mistake. I have since cut the posts down to 180, removing anything thin, redundant or way off topic.

After the move, conversions were immediately cut in half...with pretty much the same traffic volume. Makes sense once you examine it as dilution.
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[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 4:06 pm (utc) on Oct 3, 2014]
[edit reason] removed excessive white-space at bottom of post [/edit]