January 27, 2006
Recently, someone asked me about
moving from one domain to another. They had
read that
Google recommends using a 301
redirect
to let Googlebot know about the move, but they weren't sure if they should do that. They wondered
if Googlebot would follow the 301
to the new site, see that it contained the same
content as the pages already indexed from the old site, and think it was duplicate content (and
therefore not index it). They wondered if a 302
redirect would be a better option.
I told them that a 301
redirect was exactly what they should do. A
302
redirect tells Googlebot that the move is temporary and that Google should continue to index the
old domain. A
301
redirect tells Googlebot that the move is permanent and that Google should start indexing the new
domain instead. Googlebot won't see the new site as duplicate content, but as moved
content. And that's exactly what someone who is changing domains wants.
They also wondered how long it would take for the new site to show up in Google search results. They thought that a new site could take longer to index than new pages of an existing site. I told them that if they noticed that it took a while for a new site to be indexed, it was generally because it took Googlebot a while to learn about the new site. Googlebot learns about new pages to crawl by following links from other pages and from Sitemaps. If Googlebot already knows about a site, it generally finds out about new pages on that site quickly, since the site links to the new pages.
I told them that by using a 301
to redirect Googlebot from the old domain to the new
one and by submitting a Sitemap for the new domain, Googlebot could much more quickly learn about
the new domain than it might otherwise. They could also let other sites that link to their site
know about the domain change so that other sites could update their links.
The crawling and indexing processes are completely automated, so I couldn't tell them exactly when
the domain would start showing up in results. But letting Googlebot know about the site (using a
301
redirect and a Sitemap) is an important first step in that process.
You can find out more about
submitting a Sitemap in our documentation
and you can find out more about how to use a 301
redirect by doing a Google search
for 301
redirect.