changing domain name. What should be done first?

OtitO · #1 (**permalink**) 08-28-2004, 01:41 PM

Hi. I decided to change my domain name and also signed up for yahoo hosting.
My site has 34 pages indexed by google till the moment. Last week I used the automatic removal facility of googlebot and removed some pages that are no longer available on my site and it worked.
Now I know I have to remove the whole site from google to avoid duplicate content penalty. But what I do not know is should I wait until it is completely eliminated from google's index?That takes time and there is another problem: google wants the site you want to delete alive and want to see the robots.txt saying"do not crawl".
Any similar experience?

google junky · #2 (**permalink**) 08-28-2004, 08:24 PM

I don't see any problem with dropping a domain and creating a new one with the same content as long as the old domain does not exist any longer. If google cannot find the old domain when it crawls then you should be fine. You wont need a robots.txt to stop google if the domain is no longer there or has no content.

If you need to keep the old domain up until your visitors know where your new site is at then you would need a robots.txt

If the old site was highly ranked and had many inbound links then it may take 3 months or more to get back to where you were. definitely don't forget to email all the sites that linked to you.

kikkertm · #3 (**permalink**) 08-28-2004, 10:54 PM

Why not just keep the old domain name for a while and set up a permanent redirect, redirecting to your new domain. I think a HTTP-301 redirect should do the trick (If I remember correctly) and would also 'copy' your PR to your new domain name.

OtitO · #4 (**permalink**) 08-29-2004, 03:18 AM

Thanks. I do not have any problem with PR or inboud links. PR0 and 4 or 5 inbound links that can be edited by email.(site is new)
I will go ahead, shutdown the old hosting and lock the domain name and hope that Slurp & Gbot will remove the old dead pages from their indices so that the new site looks unique to them.

robinev · #5 (**permalink**) 08-29-2004, 08:50 PM

Yahoo isn't too good at removing old pages, so you might find that they continue to list your old pages for a long time to come, even if they also list your new pages.