Hi,

I'm running a web site with about 55,000 unique visitors per day. We've been up for almost 10 years. Due to some issues, we're planning on changing our domain name and hence the name of the site itself.

Now, we get 70% of our traffic from Google. We would redirect traffic from each old domain page to the appropriate new domain page. So we can make a solid move that would hurt us the least. So every content page would redirect to the same page on the new domain name.

However, I am naturally worried about how much of the Google traffic we will lose. Has anybody here made any such attempts with their own sites and what were the consequences? I would of course appreciate any such info or thought immensely.

Google makes of course 95% of our SE traffic. No surprise there.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,

[EDIT] One example. We have the top result placement for a page with a KEYWORD on the "old" current domain name. Then we move the site to the new domain (with the same structure), including that page. What happens when google crawls the old site again and finds out that the top ranked result for the KEYWORD is leading to a page that is redirecting to an identical page, on another domain? Huh

There will be "consequences"

301 redirect and eventually the new hostname will replace the existing, you will lose traffic, rankings and the useless PR value and it may take at least 6 months to recover, however; ten years of accumulated links is a lot to redirect though and the site may never actually fully recover what is has now.

We get 75% of traffic via search engines. If that crumbles down completely, we're down to 25% of the traffic. And that would be bad.

The old domain is StrategyInformer and the new domain I bought is GameWatcher. Sounds a lot better, and describes us much more. And is shorter. Since we're a game web site, StrategyInformer makes almost no sense any more.

I was looking for a webmasters forum in google, and of course I ended up here. I wouldn't come here if it was called StrategyInformer. Practically the same difference.

But I can't afford to lose 75% of the traffic...

So after TEN YEARS of promotion and getting your site known by that name you decide it might be a problem?

I think you can be pretty much assured that it isn't!

Why not just simply change your site title and keep the URIs the same?

Why not park the new domain on the top of the existing one keep both URIs and take the next ten years to promote and change over the new one.
Duplicate content filtering is NOT a concern in any way shape or form.

ANYTHING has got to be better than throwing away TEN YEARS of accumulated "worth" on a silly whim that has absolutely no basis in fact!

Originally Posted by chrishirst

So after TEN YEARS of promotion and getting your site known by that name you decide it might be a problem?

Exactly chrishirst. The name works almost against us, and we need to put x3 effort into making a move forward.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Why not just simply change your site title and keep the URIs the same?

Why not park the new domain on the top of the existing one keep both URIs and take the next ten years to promote and change over the new one.
Duplicate content filtering is NOT a concern in any way shape or form.

I'm aware that Google isn't penalizing for duplicated content, hence one of lesser evils would be to freeze current domain updating, copy everything over to the new domain, and resume work on the new domain. While pointing out on each page with a simple statement that we've moved. Content would still be available there without any 301's.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

ANYTHING has got to be better than throwing away TEN YEARS of accumulated "worth" on a silly whim that has absolutely no basis in fact!

Yeah. Sounds like a plant devised that idea? Well, our members and staff are all up for the idea for changing. I see their concern about unrelated name. Making a life work over a web site whos name is unrelated to what you're trying to do is a small ulcer on a daily routine.

Thanks for your thoughts Chris. Appreciate talking with somebody about what's actually waiting for us on the other side of the renaming idea.

I'm not sure how

55,000 unique visitors per day

means that it's an "unrelated name"

I say this over and over. Does;
"Amazon" say "we sell books"? Which is what they started as.
"Ebay" say "online auction site"?

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/domain...tml#post977986

Change the site title (branding) by all means BUT FOR GOODNESS SAKE KEEP the URIs the same.

I am going to agree 100% with everything Cris has said.

The bulk of your visitors find you via the SEs. Most times when I search, I search for content not the name of the site. I visit first what looks the most relevant and work my way down the list.

The only time a domain name may influence my choice and cause me to look at the names is when I am looking for a brand name I know and just don't know the site name.

How would we ask an ad client to pay us $10-20k for a campaign if our domain was X and site name Y.

I actually found my old post here about asking the same thing. Yeah please discourage me cause it would hurt if we went through with it.

Originally Posted by colbyt

I am going to agree 100% with everything Cris has said.

The bulk of your visitors find you via the SEs. Most times when I search, I search for content not the name of the site. I visit first what looks the most relevant and work my way down the list.

The only time a domain name may influence my choice and cause me to look at the names is when I am looking for a brand name I know and just don't know the site name.

Yes traffic wise it's great. But community response time it's not that great. We're having hard times on getting people to participate in the community. Name is quite important, solely in that regard.

We have been planning to do the same so I have found much useful information/ Thanks, chrishirst!

Originally Posted by Kres7787

How would we ask an ad client to pay us $10-20k for a campaign if our domain was X and site name Y.

Not sure I see the point.

Why would any intelligent advertiser care? They are buying the exposure to your visitors.

It's like advertising poster boards in public toilets on motorways. Advertisers pay a LOT of money to have their name there because they get their ad and their name in front of THOUSANDS of pairs of eyes every day.
Sure the surrounding are little to do with the adverts and we all know why the "viewers" are there but Hey! would you say "I don't want my advert seen by 50,000 people a day because it's in a toilet"!!

0.5% of those numbers converting could add up to a good amount of turnover

This is the world of advertising. It's NUMBERS that count not a name.

Originally Posted by Kres7787

Yes traffic wise it's great. But community response time it's not that great. We're having hard times on getting people to participate in the community. Name is quite important, solely in that regard.

Check out the stats on the front of this site a few times. There will always be a high % of lurkers, people who want to read, not join and contribute.

Just my personal opinion here, you have made up your mind that whatever problems your site may have is because of the name and that simply isn't true. Go ahead and kill or greatly handicap your site if you want to do so.

That's not the way I would do it. Some type of parallel branding over a long period of time might allow you to accomplish your objective. That is the way the pros do it. How many years did it take for Kentucky Fried Chicken to become KFC Chicken?

Could you possibly concede that those marketing boys might know more than you???

After reading in my opinion we tend to think that name would matter but actually it will not.

Does it make difference if Google means search or not?

Think and act wisely and not by influence of some crappy marketeers.