Moving your Web Site to a different Domain Name
A personal experience for a domain name change and what worked for me in regards to Google Page Rank and SEO effects
There seems to be a ton of uncertainty when it comes to moving or changing your web site to a different domain name and what works and what doesn't. Chief concern is what effects performing a domain name change has on your current Google Page Rank and your search engine optimization tactics. I decided to give it a whirl and actually test a migration for a web site from one domain name to another domain name. I have included a timeline based on these events.
History
I registered domain name domain1.com and built a web site with roughly 12 .html pages. I also included a robots.txt file, sitemap.xml file along with 5 directories; img, cgi-bin, templates and two others. I did not do a 301 redirect from the non-www pages (domain1.com) to www.domain1.com. I submitted the sitemap.xml site map to Google Web Master Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Bing Web Master Tools. After roughly 10 days all of my pages were indexed including the robots.text file and sitemap.xml file on Google. Yahoo and Bing did not index the site yet but experience shows that they take a bit longer to index web sites. I created an account at Google Local Business and submitted the domain name as www.domain1.com. Some of the more competitive keyword pages shoed a bit lower in the searches on Google but that's to be expected with a new domain name. Things were going according to plan. My pages were being indexed as www.domain1.com and not domain1.com. So, Google was indexing the pages as www and not the non-www page. After roughly one week of this when I was certain that Google's indexing was caught up I registered another domain name domain2.com. I was using a Windows 2003 Server with IIS 6. I copied the web site from domain1.com to domain2.com. Had the exact same file and folder structure and permissions in place. I already created the DNS A Record for the site so it was live. I also included a sitemap.xml file and robots.txt file. I ensured that all links on the domain2.com web site were pointing to Http://www.domain2.com and not to Http://www.domain1.com I then configured on IIS a 301 redirect initially from just the core .html pages (index.html, sitemap.html, contact-us.html) to the new web site. So I redirected 301 permanently from http://www.domain1.com/contact-us.html to http://www.domain2.com/contact-us.html and for the other .html pages, such as; http://www.domain1.com/sitemap.xml and http://www.domain1.com/robots.txt to to http://www.domain2.com/contact-us.html and http://www.domain1.com/sitemap.xml. I did not created a 301 redirect from http://domain2.com to http://www.domain2.com yet. After just 301 redirecting the 12 core pages I tapped into Google Webmaster Tools and performed a Change of Address (move site to a new domain) request. It failed initially because I did not verify the domain1.com web site just the www.domain1.com site. I then added the code and verified the domain1.com address without the "www." It goes without saying that I did add the www.domain2.com web site to Google Web Master Tools and verified that as well. I then sat back to see what would happen.
This is where patience would have been nice to have but I decided to take a more erratic approach. I was initially concerned that changing a domain name after only having a web site up for two weeks would definitely introduce some red flags. I felt confident that this would not work out for me and that both sites would be punished for such foolishness. I probably should have made my changes and sat back on it for a week at least to observe the changes. But NO.... I had to start making all sorts of crazy changes. But alas, this story has a happy ending.
I started checking the IIS Logs for Googlebot activity. The first 24 hours I noticed that the Google bot spider rarely came back. Just one or two entries. Compared to the domain1.com site there was virtually no activity. I started submitting my new domain2.com/sitemap.xml file regularly on Google Web Master Tools and also performed the tests to see if Googlebot could fetch the new robots.txt files. Still no real Googlebot activity. I decided to test my 301 redirects. I noticed that the redirect for http://www.domain1.com to http://www.domain2.com would go from http://www.domain1.com to http://www.domain2.com/index.html such as;
#1 Server Response: http://www.domain1.com
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Content-Length: 153
Content-Type: text/html
Location: http://www.domain2.com/index.html
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:14:16 GMT
Connection: close
Redirect Target: http://www.domain2.com/index.html
#2 Server Response: http://www.domain2.com/index.html
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 18734
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Location: http://www.domain2.com/index.html
Last-Modified: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:53:16 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
ETag: "4e391a2fb07bca1:d86"
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:14:16 GMT
Connection: close
I didn't like the fact that it was being redirected to http://www.domain2.com/index.html and not http://www.domain2.com So, I decided to change the IIS 6 301 redirect for the root web site domain1 I changed the root web site folder to 301 redirect from /sites/domain1 to http://www.domain2.com. These are the results;
#1 Server Response: http://domain1.com
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Content-Length: 153
Content-Type: text/html
Location: http://www.domain2.com/
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:14:16 GMT
Connection: close
Redirect Target: http://www.domain2.com/
#2 Server Response: http://www.domain2.com/
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Length: 18734
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Location: http://www.domain2.com/index.html
Last-Modified: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:53:16 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
ETag: "4e391a2fb07bca1:d86"
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:14:16 GMT
Connection: close
Perfect I thought. I then created a 301 redirect from http://domain2.com to http://www.domain2.com This was to 301 redirect my non-www pages to www pages to inform spiders that I wished to index all pages as www. I still noticed very little activity in the IIS logs as to visits from Googlebot. The www.domain1.com site and its pages were still indexed in Google and still showing up in web searches. I then started to think about what other files/folders I should have redirected or if I should have even redirected the robots.txt file or sitemap.xml files. I decided to make another change and decided to redirect all folders/files from http://www.domain1.com to http://www.domain2.com So everything was now being redirected to the new site. The Googlebot was still nowhere to be found but did visit one of my core .html files. I did change some of the folder redirects to be more specific and then changed them back again. I also changed the root web site redirection back to www.domain2.com/index.html and then back again to just www.domain2.com At this point I felt that I was changing too much in such a short period and Google would surely tag all this business as being very suspicious.
I then logged into Google Web Master Tools and noticed that my indexed page count on www.doamin1.com was now listed as 0 where as 24 hours ago it was 12. My www.domain1.com pages were still coming up in searches and still indexed so far. I then decided to change the 301 redirects on my folders and sub files back to not being redirected except for the core .html files and robots.txt and sitemap.xml. Still not a whole lot of activity from the Googlebot but did notice that it visited each redirected page only once. I then created 3 more core .html web pages on the new site www.domain2.com and resubmitted my sitemap.xml and robots.txt file. I then decided to 301 redirect all of my folders, sub folders and sub files back to http://www.domain2.com. After about three days of sitting back and watching I finally noticed that one of my new pages; http://www.domain2.com/contact-us was indexed in Google. The following day all 12 core pages that were being redirected where also indexed. The next two days my three new .html core pages were also indexed. Doing some search testing the new redirected pages were in roughly the same spots in a Google search that the original pages occupied. Slowly over the next couple of days the original www.domain1.com core pages were not showing up in Google Searches and then completely disappeared from a site:domain1.com search string.
So, I guess the domain move tool on Google's site does, in fact work quite well. I would advise that before you use it that you understand completely 301 redirects and how to implement them on your current web server. I made so many changes after I submitted the domain name change that I felt certain that the new web site would never be indexed. The whole process only took one week and this did involve two completely new domain names and web sites for that matter. The key is patience and not making too many changes at once so that you allow yourself enough time to see what effects your actions caused.