Redirected old domain to new domain, rankings affected

[nickys]

Help!
I redirected my site oldsite .com to newsite .com and for 4 days the site kept showing up in the serps as oldsite .com suddenly yesterday oldsite .com stopped showing up for must of the categories I've been showing up for and newsite .com didn't take it's place!

I didn't actually submit my new site to webmaster world as a redirect until yesterday whne the ranking started going down.

What should I do? Is there any hope?

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 5:40 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2015]
[edit reason] better to avoid publishing your domain names in the general case [/edit]

[not2easy]

First, I'm pretty sure you intended to type "Webmaster Tools" (or GWT) as the place to submit your site.

A few questions to help sort out the situation:
When you redirected to the new site, was this a move to a new domain or a site redesign or some URL change like http: to https: only?

When you redirected from the old site to the new site, how did you handle the redirect? Was it via your htaccess file? Did you use 301 redirect and verify that it was all in order?

There is always hope, but to get good suggestions it helps to know something about the environment you are working with. Is this an ecommerce site? Is this static html? Is it a WP or some other blog? None of the above?

With some info people can assist. :)

[nickys]

It's a humor site [domain removed] I redirected it through the htaccess file using a 301 redirect it was both a redesign and a new domain but all of the url's stayed the same

[edited by: brotherhood_of_LAN at 6:51 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2015]
[edit reason] See original reason for edit, and terms of service. thanks! [/edit]

[not2easy]

All I can say is, "Better late than never.."

You have submitted your site, now it can takes weeks, days or months before the changes finish showing up in the results. In the meantime the old pages bring people to the new site. If the new pages are beginning to show up, they may or may not immediately occupy the same positions as before, but it is in process and the rest is just waiting for Google to digest and sort it all.

[nickys]

I'm just wondering if I did something wrong?
I was always under the impression that a 301 will redirect the traffic and u won't lose much I didn't realise it was such a long process with risks involved.
If I would have know I wouldn't have done it.

[not2easy]

A 301 does redirect traffic - and google. Google notices it is a new/different URL than they expected. Now they have to figure it out. Adding the new site in GWT will help, but this takes a little while.

[lucy24]

Did you say you're redirecting the entire site page-for-page to a new domain name? If so, there's a place in WMT where you can say you're moving. Then they can make the whole change globally all at once. (Google currently only does this for entire sites. That Other Search Engine lets you do it by individual directories at any level.)