SEO Tycoon

**Dave Hybrid** · 06-03-2008, 11:08 AM

4 months ago I changed to a brand new domain name, despite a 301 redirect none of my competitive rankings are back, i still get the same traffic though through long tail searches.

Thing is before the change my site was located on the root, now it is located at /forums.

Now in Google serps I see my homepage as the root, it is not listed as www.domain.com/forums, despite the root being 302'd to /forums.

So if Google sees the root of the site as my homepage should i build links there or to /forums where the actual homepage is located.

Many thanks.

**Learning Newbie** · 06-03-2008, 05:44 PM

If you're using 302 redirs, no search engine will honor them.

**chrishirst** · 06-03-2008, 08:26 PM

A redirect to new domain will take 6 to 9 months minimum

**vangogh** · 06-03-2008, 08:48 PM

Chris I've begin to wonder about that. I moved to a new domain about 5 or 6 weeks ago and haven't lost even the slightest bit of search traffic. I'm not really quite sure how or why.

For the first week I was still showing in search results for the old domain and naturally any click got 301'd to the new domain. In about a week or so Google had indexed the new site and I was already ranking for the most of the same terms I was on the old domain.

I didn't pay as much attention to the other engines as far as when the new domain got indexed, but I haven't noticed any decrease in traffic from them.

I didn't think it would take 6+ months. I'd been hearing others say it was about a month or two with their domain, but I expected some temporary loss in traffic. I think the engines have gotten better in general at understanding when one domain moves to another, but I still wasn't expecting no loss in search traffic from the move.

I did everything I could to ensure a smooth transition, but still...

**willcode4beer** · 06-03-2008, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Hybrid

i still get the same traffic though

Um, if your traffic is still the same, why worry?

**chrishirst** · 06-04-2008, 04:36 AM

Quote:

I moved to a new domain about 5 or 6 weeks ago and haven't lost even the slightest bit of search traffic. I'm not really quite sure how or why.

3rd or 4th time I have heard this same point now in the past few months. BUT, all the sites that moved were pretty well established, with plenty of natural linkage, rather than having several hundred/thousand random link exchanges.

Unfortunately I have no way of testing this because I don't have anything live that needs to move.

Maybe the "aging delay" that was seemingly applied to all new hostnames has been "turned down" if a established site is redirected to it.

**vangogh** · 11:10 PM

I definitely did a lot to make things as smooth as possible. My old domain was established enough and has natural linkage.

I purchased the new domain about a year and a half before moving and have had a placeholder page live since then. My original intention was to move last year, but I did leave the page on the new domain just in case domain age could establish some trust. Couldn't tell you whether that had any impact at all, but my thought at the time was to have the new domain age prior to moving. I knew it would be at least a few months before I could get a site together and figured it couldn't hurt.

At least where Google is concerned both domains are part of the same accounts at Webmaster Tools and Analytics. I certainly left indications in several places that would make it clear both domains are me.

I 301d everything. I changed the URL structure on the new site so the 301s were most mapped one to one, which was a complete pain in the you know what. I have a very long .htaccess file currently on the old domain.

I did change links under my control like my sig here and other forums to point to the new domain so a good amount of links don't have to go through the redirect.

I can't think of anything else at the moment that I specifically did. Mostly the usual when you move. Having the new domain age for what turned out to be about 19 or 20 months I think was the probably the only unusual thing.