big drop in traffic from organic search after domain name change?

[stratton]

My company operated with "domainname1" for several years.

The company wanted to rebrand itself from "domainname1" to "domainname2"

"domainname1" had been experiencing strong traffic growth through the first half of the year.

For the name changeover, initially, the the organic search results would name "domainname1" and then when a user clicked, they would be redirected to "domainname2". If a user directly typed the "domainname1" URL they were redirected to "domainname2".

A lot of the website's traffic comes from organic search on Google.

The webmaster then took down "domain name 1". Google organic search traffic plummeted. It's been four months and it has not recovered at all.

If I do site:domainname2 on google, the site is fully indexed.

I'm sure this is an incomplete description since I only know the basics of SEO, but from my description, can anyone help with what we should be asking of our technicians or checking to diagnose root cause? The answer I'm getting is that google "sees" the site as brand new, and has penalized it in the rankings accordingly. Somehow, I'm feeling there must be more to it than that since we did the inital redirects for several months, and it has been several months since the cutover with no improvement.

[ebuzzmaster]

It sounds as if your webmaster took down the domain where you had 301 redirects (or possibly 302 redirects?) going to your new domain. You really should keep that domain up with page-by-page 301 redirects to domainname2.

The reason for this is:
302 tells google that this is a temporary thing, and not to index the other page.
301 tells google that the page has moved permanently, and that should index the new page / domain AND reallocate all of your inbound links to the new site.

Considering that keeping an old domain registered is not particularly expensive, I recommend that you keep the old domain up, and do your page-by-page 301 redirects so that people who bookmarked, who have old links or who did inbound linking to domainname1 still get to your site.

[DesignsOnline]

How was the redirect done?
Joe

P.s feel free to contact me via Freelancer website designers - Shopping carts, web page design

[cbosleeds]

Other issues might arise through lost links that were previously pointed at domain name 1 for both the home page and internal pages on there - the value of these will have been lost. Also the new domain name will not have the trust history that the old one does - this is why keeping the 301 up is essential. Or, you could even bind the two domain names which is another way to solve the issue - this way domain 1 brings in the organic traffic and domain 2 is for branding and advertising - only draw back of this is that inbound links are sure to end up diluted between the 2 of them.


If you can find as many of the links that were pointing at 1 as possible and get them changed so they point at 2 this will help.

[stratton]

It sounds as if your webmaster took down the domain where you had 301 redirects (or possibly 302 redirects?) going to your new domain. You really should keep that domain up with page-by-page 301 redirects to domainname2.

The reason for this is:
302 tells google that this is a temporary thing, and not to index the other page.
301 tells google that the page has moved permanently, and that should index the new page / domain AND reallocate all of your inbound links to the new site.

Considering that keeping an old domain registered is not particularly expensive, I recommend that you keep the old domain up, and do your page-by-page 301 redirects so that people who bookmarked, who have old links or who did inbound linking to domainname1 still get to your site.

He used 301 redirects

If you type "domainname1" it does redirect to "domainname2"

Here's the extra wrinkle. This website is itself a vertical search engine. So they are in a kind of unusual position - the pages are not static URLs like a regular ecommerce or lead generation site, they change as the content of what the vertical engine is indexing.

So here's an example in a vertical that is different from mine. If you are shopping for prices, there are a bunch of shopping search engines that will do price comparisons. When I go to google and type in, for example, "ugg boots", some of the organic results go directly to sellers of that product and some (many) lead to links for shopping price comparison engines like shopzilla, nexttag, dealtime, etc. Now if I as a shopper click on the google organic listing for nexttag, nexttag has prices and availability from across the web's merchants. If I want to buy, I click on the merchant listing on nexttag, and I go directly to their site. Nextag sells advertising, and of course, the more traffic they get, the more advertising revenue.

My industry (vertical category) is not retail ecommerce, but the example works the same way. For various popular searches, we have dropped down to the bottom third of the first page (if your first page is set to 100 results)... and can't seem to work our way back up the page. The page content and tags are optimized the same way they were prior to the name cutover... the only thing that changed is they are now listed with a URL of domainname2.com

[stratton]

If you can find as many of the links that were pointing at 1 as possible and get them changed so they point at 2 this will help.

Is there a tool I can use to see who is pointing at 1?

[ebuzzmaster]

Is there a tool I can use to see who is pointing at 1?

One way is a Google command:
link:http://www.domainname1.com

Also, check old web logs for referrer URLs. May be time-consuming, but it'll help you sort out the ones that drive both real traffic and link value.

[ami_iss]

Dear Stratton,
Check Google for listings and backlinks of domainname1 and domainname2
EG:
link:domainname1.com
site:domainame1.com

link:domainname2.com
site:domainame2.com
See what Google lists for different pages.

Google warns that it does not like redirection. The best advice for people who want to change domain names is "don't do it." The site probably lost all its listings and has to start over. If the old domain name is still live or available you can leave all the old web pages and change the new ones just enough so they are not listed as duplicate content. If it is a constantly changing search, there should be no real problem of duplicate content. There is no reason I can think of not to leave the advertisements at both sites.

If it is an e-business, modify the old pages to note discontinued products and to point to the correct shopping cart software etc. - and put links to the new site on every page.
If the client is unable to host both

See Web design errors and pitfalls and other articles at SEO - Search Engine Optimization

[SuperHatz]

Why didn't your web master simply park the new name on top of the old and leave your
existing link structures intact? You may still have time...If you do a search for siteldurl.com
and see links - you should jump on the idea of reversing your redirect strategy and use
a parking strategy instead. Links take time to build and knee jerk decisions will only have
your eyes rolling. Good luck.

[GP200]

Use either Yahoo Site Explorer or logged in to Google webmaster tools to check links. the link:domain search in Google will never give an accurate list.