Permanent 301 redirect to new domain name

[Farhan]

hi everyone, i have moved my blog to a new domain name and set a 301 permanent redirect to the new(its an old domain which had a website indexed) domain name. My previous domain has approx. 90 pages all indexed. The pages of the new domain name arent getting indexed. Can someone tell me how long does it take for google to index the new(changed) domain name? i have removed the sitemap of the previous domain name from google's webmaster tools and submitted the sitemap for the new(changed) domain name there. How long do i have to wait? Should i continue posting new content or should i wait to first get my posts indexed first?
thanx for reading,
Farhan.

[g1smd]

Verify that your redirect returns 301, and not 302. Use Live HTTP Headers for Firefox.

Check that the redirect works for both www and non-www at the old domain, and that both redirect you to www at the new domain.

Verify that the originally requested filepath is preserved in the redirect. That is, ensure that a "page" request at the old domain is NOT simply redirected to the root of the new domain.

Verify that non-www on the new domain redirects to www on the new domain, and preserves the originally requested path.

Check that for any starting point that is redirected, that the final target URL is reached in only one hop. That is, make sure that stuff like this does NOT happen:

exampleolddomain.com/somepage --> example.com/somepage --> www.example.com/somepage

Make sure that start to finish, the user sees just one redirect, and does NOT see a chain.

[Farhan]

everythings perfect,

wat is live http header, i have it installed but not able to understand its functions

[g1smd]

*** everythings perfect ***

You cannot possibly know that just by looking at the page showing in your browser. You really do have to look at the HTTP response codes returned by the server.

The only way to do that is to use Live HTTP Headers for Firefox, or a similar product.

Open it in a new tab.

Go back to the original tab. Type in a URL and hit Enter.

Wait for the page to load.

Go to the Headers tab, and you will see the "conversation" between your browser and the server.

You need to look at the Status Codes returned for each request and verify they are all correct and what you want: 200, 301, 404, etc.

In particular, a chain, or a 302, is usually bad news. Likewise 500 and unexpected 4xx or 5xx errors will need to be investigated.

[g1smd]

As an example, I type in www.example.com/folder/index.html and my browser takes me to www.examplenewsite.com/newfolder/.

Everything is perfect, no?

.

Now I look at Live HTTP Headers and see:

Request: www.example.com/folder/index.html

Response: www.example.com/folder/index.html -- 302 -->

example.com/folder -- 301 -->

example.com/folder/ -- 302 -->

www.example.com/folder/ -- 302 -->

examplenewsite.com/newfolder -- 301 -->

examplenewsite.com/newfolder/ -- 302 -->

www.examplenewsite.com/newfolder/ --> 200 OK.

That's an Extremely Mis-Configured Server, and the "Redirection Chain From Hell".

You would want to know about that. Right Away. If Not Sooner.

[Farhan]

ok verified...no chain........only 301 permanent redirect.........also i noticed one previous inner url i had typed in the browser with the previous domain name in it and the corrosponding page opened in the browser with the new domain........only this particular inner url has been indexed........this seems the way to go for quicker indexing

[g1smd]

Google will pick up the new URLs quicker than they drop the old ones.

Don't worry about that. Both URLs will bring traffic for a while, until the old ones are dropped.

The redirect ensures the visitor can still access the content, rather than being fed a 404 and going elsewhere.

[Farhan]

thanx g1smd for quickly sorting this out

[g1smd]

More in: [webmasterworld.com...]

[Farhan]

hi,
now most of my pages are indexed at the new domain, now the problem is they have lost 95% of their rankings. Is this temperary or permanent? if temperary then how long will it take to get back the rankings. Also wanted to tell you that the old domain( the redirected one) hardly has any backlinks and the new domain (the one to which the old domain has been redirected to) has PR and many good backlinks.

[phranque]

domains don't have PR, urls do.
PR=Page Rank

[Farhan]

" the url of the 10 year old domain domain.com having url [domain.com...] has a Page Rank of 2 "

--hope this makes things clear

[jdMorgan]

You will see a temporary drop in the rankings, because Google has to do back-end processing in order to pass the old URLs' PageRank to the new URLs when it finds the 301 redirects. It can take anywhere from a few days to several months for everything to return to normal, depending on the PageRank of the original URL, and depending on how often your URLs are spidered.

Don't change anything about the redirect. If you do, then the "delay clock" starts all over again.

Jim

[Farhan]

the page rank of the original url was 0 but it used to get spidered several times a day....... a PR 0 can pass any link equity?

[jdMorgan]

I'd guess you are quoting the Google Toolbar PR value.

Be aware that actual PageRank is a logarithmic, not linear value, and that it likely includes many, many decimal places -- unlike the linear, single-digit PR shown on the toolbar. Also, that toolbar PR (TBPR) is not updated very often (perhaps four times per year), whereas actual PR is re-calculated constantly.

Therefore, is quite doubtful that your actual page PR is 0.000000000000, and so yes, it will pass *some* PR.

While you are waiting for Google to recognize your 301 redirects, it sounds like spending some time seeking on-topic, relevant links from related-subject sites would be a very good investment of your time.

Jim

[Farhan]

thanx Jim for the info and advise