Difference between 301 Redirect and Google’s Change of Address
What is the benefit of using the Change of Address tool in Google Webmaster Tools, compared to just setting up the required 301 redirection to the new site? And why should I renew the change of address notification every 180 days? Can’t I just leave the 301 redirection in place?
The answer is, yes, 301 redirect is the best way to move a site as only Google has a Change of Address form in its Webmaster Tools. You need to depend on 301 redirects for the other major search engines like Yahoo, Bing or Ask.
The main difference in Change of Address Form and 301 redirect is the latter is webpage level and the former is site level. So, if you are keeping your URL structure same on the new site, the Change of Address is enough for Google. But, if you want to change the URL structure, 301 redirect is the ultimate and safest way.
Another difference is that, indexing a 301 redirected page can take some time as Google need to follow the redirection first, but the Change of Address form sends the information immediately to Google and the spider starts to crawl the new page almost instantly.
The fact is, using the both together is the best way to move a site. Google’s Change of Address form along with page level 301 redirects. That way, SERP, PR, Backlinks and all the other factors will be preserved.
Thanks a lot. I saw many posts on this topic on the web but this was one of the most usefull.
If I do a 301 redirect + change of address on a ccTLD (ex. company.com.au) to a generic (company.com) will the generic retain the country specific properties and show up in a local search (google.com.au “Pages from Australia”)?
Geo Targeting is lot more than just having a ccTLD. There shouldn’t be any problem if you use a TLD.
However, using a ccTLD surely helps to make the process easier.
yes, but we have multiple markets, not just one. How do we get into local search results with one global website?
In that case, tons of optimization needs to be done.
If I were you, I would have started with creating subdimains for each country I target. For example, de.company.com for German users and use German as the language. Similarly, au.domain.com for Australia and use Australian English.
The second step would have been getting links for each domain from corresponding ccTLD domains.
Thank you Abhik. I appreciate your input. One more question. Do you know if a 301 rediect from company.co.uk to company.com passes on the ccTLD location info? Will Google recognize it in a localized search from google.co.uk?
I don’t think so..
When you make a 301 redirect, the old page will no longer available (Google will de-index that in order to index the destination page) in Google SERP.
But, a 301 redirect does preserve and passes some data like backlinks and PR.
Why are you changing the domain? Keep it if possible as Google gives priority to the country specific domains in local search. But like Abhik said.. “Geo Targeting is lot more than just having a ccTLD”.
We have 4 domain names: company.com, company.co.uk, company.com.au and company.co.za. We have offices in these locations and want to show up in their respective local searches. The company.com URL does well in organic search results, however the others are not indexing. I realize this is because they are seen by Google as 4 separate sites with duplicate information. The obvious answer is to use a 301 redirect, but we want to make sure we retain the benefit of having the ccTLD for localized searches. If possible, we would also like the original URL to remain while browsing the site:http://www.company.co.uk/applications. What should I do?