How does one change his domain name without losing hits?

06/10/2010

I recently decided to drop one of the domain names that points to my blog. After (finally) getting the proper domain (pedroassuncao.com), i figured there was no sense anymore in keeping the old one (diffract.me).

Now here’s the problem: A lot of google links that bring a huge percentage of my traffic are pointing to the old one. That explains why – from last week to this one – i got a 90% traffic decrease in visits and page views. I definitely should have done something to prevent or at least minimize this “problem”, but i didn’t.

So my question is: What could i have done? Anyone out there has had this problem before? If so, what did you do to mitigate it?

UPDATE: Thanks for all the comments, that was really helpful. One in particular (by Ryan) explains a nice solution really in detail.

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Categorised as: blogging, cries for help

Guest says:

06/10/2010 at 15:21

Redirect? For instance: HTTP 301 moved permanently.

paul_houle says:

06/10/2010 at 15:14

301 Redirect. Simple. Please send me an address to send your bill to.

LDM says:

06/10/2010 at 15:06

Have the old one redirect to the new one for a while? I think there is a tag you can put in the redirect so that when Bots re-crawl it they will update the links.

nocivus says:

06/10/2010 at 15:44

Yep, in case you also want to know, some other people here explain it. Thanks.

Ryan says:

06/10/2010 at 14:53

Your best bet would be to do a full and proper 301 redirect using the rewrite module, like so (I gather you use nginx to host this site).

server {
listen 80;
server_name http://www.example.com;
rewrite ^/(.*) http://example2.com/$1 permanent;
}

There are two very important pieces to this. The first is the "$1" variable which will match the URL structure of the old site to the new one. If you rearranged the URLs on your blog in the process of moving domains, you might have to add some directories or logic here, but since you're on WordPress I gather your URLs have stayed the same.

Second, the keyword "permanent" is very important from the perspective of search engines. This will return a "301" response which tells the engines that the content has permanently moved to the new location. When they receive this response (as opposed to a 302/Temporary) they will update the listings in the search results with the new URL.

For future transitions, I would recommend you keep up 301 redirects for at least a year before expiring the old domain, Google seems to transfer about 75% of the links and authority of the old domain in that time.

nocivus says:

06/10/2010 at 15:43

Indeed i use nginx. Thanks for sharing. I guess next time i'll have to force myself to have the time to do that

Carlo says:

06/10/2010 at 14:35

When the domain diffract.me is expired?

One domain not renewed may only renewed and not registered from an other person; I’m not sure that is right for the .me domains but it’s right for the domain .com!

nocivus says:

06/10/2010 at 15:42

It's already expired, and i don't really want it back. I just wanted to know what i should have done to make sure search engines redirected to the new one. Thanks.

Anonymous says:

06/10/2010 at 14:30

mod_rewrite

nocivus says:

06/10/2010 at 15:42

I actually had both for a while, but i should have definitely used redirection to make sure google (and other search engines) updated their indexes. Live and learn i guess