Change of Domain

How can I keep my traffic

[JudgeJeffries]

I have to change from a dot.info to a dot.co.uk.(I've not done anything wrong, just want to get into UK regional results)
If I take the dot.info down and submit the dot.co.uk I will be losing all the traffic from dot.info for a considerable period.
Is there any way I can (so as not to have two concurrent mirror sites or upset the SE's in any other way) retain the dot.info traffic whilst the dot.co.uk gets into the results?

[BigDave]

Do a redirect permanent from your .info to your .co.uk site. As long as all the files are named the same, you should not have any problems.

[snowfox121]

I've heard this before.

But let's say i do not have my own server. i have my own domain, but not my own server. i am hosted. It's my understanding that a permanent redirect is a server-level procedure, no?

I am in this same process, changing domain names with the same content.

[BigDave]

If you are on an apache server, you can put a .htaccess file in the top level directory for your domain with the following line

RedirectPermanent / [newdomain.co.uk...]

And it will send a 301 redirect permanent back to the browser telling it to go look at the new site.

If you are stuck on an windoze IIS server, then I have no idea how to do it.

[aspdesigner]

1) Ask your existing hosting company if they can do this for you.

2) If your site is hosted on a Windows server, it should be possible to do this yourself using ASP. You can control the HTTP headers that are sent back, I haven't had the need to try this myself, but it should be possible to generate a "perm moved" response from ASP programically.

[JudgeJeffries]

Many thanks for all your help. I was sweating thinking I might have to do the garden for a few months. Its technically beyond me but I use a very friendly hosting service and nothing seems to be to much trouble for them.

[jdMorgan]

Why not just have both domains (.info and .co.uk) point to the same server?

If you must abandon the .info TLD for some reason, then put a redirect on it and try to leave it up for at least a month - overlap the time the two TLDs are active, and redirect from old to new, that is.

Otherwise, just have your DNS updated to point both top-level domains, .info and .co.uk, to your server.

Jim

[aspdesigner]

Potential duplicate page filter problem then. Google may decide to keep the .info and dump and/or refuse to index the duplicate .uk! I have seen several instances where people did this and Google got "stuck" on their old domain name.

Better to feed Googlebot a 301 and tell it which domain to keep and which one to remove.

[jdMorgan]

aspdesigner,

My question was really directed at whether the old TLD has to be abandoned.

Yes, I'd keep the old one, use it to redirectpermanent to the new to avoid dup content penalties, and if not possible to keep the old TLD, then at least try to overlap them for a month or more to redirect users and 'bots to the new domain name.

Sometimes I just need to quit typing for the day... :o

Jim

[JudgeJeffries]

Sorry....buts what's a 301?

[aspdesigner]

It's an HTTP status code returned by a web server to indicate a permanent redirect.