Domain name change.

menzow · Jun 4, 2013

Hello BHW,

I have a good domain name which ranks #3 for the exact name of a soon to be extremely popular product.
I am in good contact with the developers of the product, but since my domain contains their product name which is a registered trademark, they've politely asked me to change the domain.

I am allowed to keep the domain for a couple of weeks as a redirect to a new domain, but how will google respond to this? I've been on #3 for about a week.

Is it possible for my new domain to rank in the same spot, because the old one is redirecting to it directly?

Regards,
Menzow

goodsamaritan · Jun 5, 2013

In google webmaster tools you can tell google you are changing your domain name.

The developers of the product should compensate you for the loss of income. Are they buying the domain from you? Make it worth your while.

scorpion king · Jun 5, 2013

YOu can do 301 redirect. It will pass link juice from your old domain to your new domain. Whenever a user clicks your old domain they will be redirected to your new domain and old doimain will be in spot 3 for some time. Between you can build links on your new domain and rank it.

Endire · Jun 5, 2013

Menzow,

It is possible for you to get back to that position assuming all of your pages are the same and goodsmaritan's suggestion is also good however you will lose your traffic levels if you haven't attained the same average position by the time the domain change comes. Three weeks is probably not enough time. Perhaps you could negotiate a longer time frame with them. Something like 8 weeks instead. That would probably be enough time.

More tips here,

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105

Best,

Shawn

Mnet17 · Jun 5, 2013

You can use 301 redirect to pass all of the juice from old domain to new domain but chance is you will lose some ranking, since you don't have the EMD factor (still plays an important role today). Therefore, it is important to start some link building activities to replace the missing ranking factor.

hootsparta · Jun 5, 2013

menzow said:
Hello BHW,

I have a good domain name which ranks #3 for the exact name of a soon to be extremely popular product.
I am in good contact with the developers of the product, but since my domain contains their product name which is a registered trademark, they've politely asked me to change the domain.

I am allowed to keep the domain for a couple of weeks as a redirect to a new domain, but how will google respond to this? I've been on #3 for about a week.

Is it possible for my new domain to rank in the same spot, because the old one is redirecting to it directly?

Regards,
Menzow

Ya you got your PR and backlinks to your new domain name...But it not comes suddenly it will be come on the next google update.

dbshoupe · Jun 5, 2013

In my experience (about a year ago) I did a domain redirect from a non-EMD to another non-EMD and the rankings of the new EMD did not match the rankings of the original. So my guess is that not all of the link juice is passed to the new domain. Maybe I'm wrong or things have changed but that is my experience. But the previous posters are correct that changing to a non-EMD will most likely negatively impact your rankings, especially in the near-term.

Domain name change.

menzow

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goodsamaritan

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scorpion king

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Endire

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Mnet17

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hootsparta

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dbshoupe

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