Domain Name Change

**sparckyz** · 21 July, 2009, 17:05 PM

I have a question about changing you domain name..

say you have a site thats got loads of backlinks and has been well promoted and you now have a better more apt domain. if you set the site up on your new domain and have a 301 redirect or something from your old site would google etc..count all of you old links and promotion and associate with your new site?

**texashiker** · 21 July, 2009, 17:30 PM

Yes, it might take a couple of weeks, but the backlinks will be forwarded to the new site. The total move might take a couple of months because pages will stay in googles index for a little while

I did this same exact thing to one of my sites. I went from a 17 letter domain name, to a 5 letter. So I set up a 301 redirect, and in a matter of days google started redirecting pages, links - everything to the new site.

Its been 2 months since I made the change and just about all of the links and everything have been moved in the search engines. If you do a google search for my old domain name, the new name ranks in 1st place. The old domain is not even listed. If you do a search for site: old domain, there are only 125 cached pages left out of several thousand.

If I do a link: old domain, there are still a lot of links that have not been updated. But google does not update the links but every few weeks anyway.

**sparckyz** · 21 July, 2009, 19:14 PM

I see..what about paid backlinks from say blogs and directories that will not be changed. So if they were getting your old domain say PR4 would your new domain get the same?

**Will.Spencer** · 21 July, 2009, 21:59 PM

Originally Posted by sparckyz

I see..what about paid backlinks from say blogs and directories that will not be changed. So if they were getting your old domain say PR4 would your new domain get the same?

Yep.

Also, there is a new section in Google Webmaster Tools to inform Google of your URL change.