Rank dropped after domain change

EMAOneBillion

EMAOneBillion

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I changed my domain (it's basically the same domain name with an added "s") and everything went cool, all 301 redirects work as intended, updated the domain in GSC, GA, etc.

The website also hasn't faced any downtime, the migration was very smooth.

For the first 4 - 5 days I haven't experienced any drop, but yesterday my traffic went down by like 70%.

Most keywords were ranking in the first 5 but now they are 100+, they are also bouncing as hell. In one day they get back to the original rank but after a few hours boom, they are out of 100 again.

I'm not that worried because these keywords have low competition and I was ranking for them for so long (more than two years) but I just want to ask from your experience, how long does it take to get rankings back?

After how long should I start getting worried if the rankings aren't recovered?

It looks like Google is a bit confused about my site right now as for some keywords it still shows up the old domain and not the new one and I'm guessing that's the reason keywords are bouncing.
 
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EMAOneBillion said:
I changed my domain (it's basically the same domain name with an added "s") and everything went cool, all 301 redirects work as intended, updated the domain in GSC, GA, etc.

The website also hasn't faced any downtime, the migration was very smooth.

For the first 4 - 5 days I haven't experienced any drop, but yesterday my traffic went down by like 70%.

Most keywords were ranking in the first 5 but now they are 100+, they are also bouncing as hell. In one day they get back to the original rank but after a few hours boom, they are out of 100 again.

I'm not that worried because these keywords have low competition and I was ranking for them for so long (more than two years) but I just want to ask from your experience, how long does it take to get rankings back?

After how long should I start getting worried if the rankings aren't recovered?

It looks like Google is a bit confused about my site right now as for some keywords it still shows up the old domain and not the new one and I'm guessing that's the reason keywords are bouncing.
Click to expand...
Its normal, usually in a month or so everything is going back to normal and the dance stop. More than a month though its problematic.
 
There is no estimated time. It's just a dance. Google is reevaluating your rankings. But mostly the rankings will start recover within a couple of months.
 
As above, it happens, your old domain will be dropping out the index and slowly replaced with your new one.

Give it a few weeks, if your traffic doesn't recover, then you've got an issue.

You should be tracking rankings regularly through the migration to see they return when the new page is indexed.
 
Thanks for the input guys. It also seems it has something to do with the crawling budget as, for the new domain in GSC, only 10% of pages have been indexed as shown in Coverage. The rest are discovered but currently not indexed. I will give in two or three weeks more weeks before jumping to conclusions. This website has been very stable the whole time and maintained most of its rankings even after the last Google updates, it would be so stupid to lose it after this migration, I'd rather kill myself.
 
EMAOneBillion said:
Thanks for the input guys. It also seems it has something to do with the crawling budget as, for the new domain in GSC, only 10% of pages have been indexed as shown in Coverage. The rest are discovered but currently not indexed. I will give in two or three weeks more weeks before jumping to conclusions. This website has been very stable the whole time and maintained most of its rankings even after the last Google updates, it would be so stupid to lose it after this migration, I'd rather kill myself.
Click to expand...
Yes, give it some time at least 1 month to figure out that it's just a google dance or you should be worried.
 
EMAOneBillion said:
I changed my domain (it's basically the same domain name with an added "s") and everything went cool, all 301 redirects work as intended, updated the domain in GSC, GA, etc.
Click to expand...

Could I ask was there a specific reason you did this?
 
MisterF said:
Could I ask was there a specific reason you did this?
Click to expand...

It was a misspelled domain name and since I have long-term plans with the website that wouldn't be acceptable at all.
If I wouldn't have faith in the website I'd never change the domain name, but it sounded so stupid that every time I looked at it got me frustrated.
My biggest mistake was not changing it on time and waiting three years to do it, stupidity and laziness at its finest.
 
It's normal mate. Usually your rank will drop after you change your domain and 301 it after some time when you change. Just wait for 3 weeks to 1 month and then you will be back to normal. In the mean time keep update your site and get good backlinks for your new domain!
 
It’s normal. This happened to me. Keep engaging and creating new articles on the new domain, You’l be able to recover.
 
Madushan said:
It’s normal. This happened to me. Keep engaging and creating new articles on the new domain, You’l be able to recover.
Click to expand...

What loss have you experienced initially and how long did it take to recover in your case?
 
Hopefully there were no issues with your old domain when you did re-direct ,try to solve the issues if there is any else just wait for some time. Google knows your website for so long and keywords will bounce back to top positions again soon.
 
Linkzo said:
Hopefully there were no issues with your old domain when you did re-direct ,try to solve the issues if there is any else just wait for some time. Google knows your website for so long and keywords will bounce back to top positions again soon.
Click to expand...

I did a 1:1 redirect for the whole site, keeping the same structure. Redirected images, sitemap, everything.
They all work as intended, checking it every day.
Also, Google indexed 60% of the new URLs but most of them are still out of 100 while few others are maintained in the top 3.
Is there anything else to do to check for errors?
 
EMAOneBillion said:
I did a 1:1 redirect for the whole site, keeping the same structure. Redirected images, sitemap, everything.
They all work as intended, checking it every day.
Also, Google indexed 60% of the new URLs but most of them are still out of 100 while few others are maintained in the top 3.
Is there anything else to do to check for errors?
Click to expand...
Nope, Google might have notified if there are anything to be changed. As far everything is good just wait for some time.
 
That's the reason, people de-index the old site before moving to the new domain.
It makes sense why you're having this problem.
olddomain.com redirects to newdomain.com so all good.
olddomain.com/page1 is indexed in google then google visits newdomain.com/page1 and sees it as a duplicate article and thus doesn't bother to rank it. But... the moment google visits olddomain.com/page1 and sees that it redirects to newdomain.com/page1 then it will fix the problem.
2 points:
1. Rarely, I have to move/rename pages so I request indexing for the old url's so google knows that old redirects to new and my new page simply replaces the old page in the index.
2. I had my site copied... exact copy and copied site didn't rank for a single keyword, well then I served dmca and it was taken down. But the point is that most of the time google will view old site as original... most not always.
So you need to make sure google knows about every single redirect and it takes time
 
Ok, back to hell.

Three weeks have passed, and traffic is still down.

I never been more desperate.

Any suggestion is highly appreciated.

What I did so far:

- Started to build few quality backlinks to the new domain (1-2 per month, low budget)
- Published 1-2 articles per day.
- Monitoring all 301 redirects, all working as expected.

I need to know the thoughts of someone who changed the domain and managed to recover all the traffic.
 
Nothing to worry about.

If the domain name is the only thing that changed you will get your rankings back eventually.

I once 301'd one of my sites and it took about month and a half for it to get where it was.
 
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