Launching New Site Soon - will submit to Google but...

domain name might change after launch

[mahlon]

So we plan on launching a new site and submitting to Google and others. However, 60-90 days after launch there is a good chance we will switch to a different domain name, IP address will stay the same. Will this affect ranking or trigger anything with Google. Should we wait to submit the site till we switch to the new domain name?

Thanks for any input!

[Semb]

There is no use to submit site to any SE if you know for sure that you'll be changing domain name soon.
www.somedomain.com/somepage.html is not the same as www.otherdomain.com/somepage.html. If you change domain name then you'll be starting from scratch as far as SE are concerned.

[ThomasB]

Semb, I disagree. If he puts a redirect from the first domain to the second it shouldn't take longer than a couple of days till G has realized that and indexes/ranks the new site instead.

[Semb]

I guess it will spider the new domain but will it immediately give the pages the same PR? These days I had to change the name of one of my inner pages which had a PR 4. For now the page with the new name has a PR 0 despite the fact that it is absolutely the same as it was except for the file name.

P.S. Googlebot is visiting my site on a daily basis and I have a permanent redirect from the old file name to the new one.

[tapanti]

I agree with ThomasB: It might take more than just a couple of weeks to get the indexes and ranks to the new domain after you 301 the old domain, but you'll eventually get pretty much the same results than in the old one.

[ThomasB]

Semb, how long ago was the change. It always takes some time till G pushes the new PR data to public DCs. But I'd guess you should see the PR after the next public PR update.