Google Webmaster Tools Has A New Feature: Change Of Address
Alongside the new Google Webmaster Tools graphical user interface, a new useful feature was also launched: Change of Address. It allows you to notify Google when a website is moved from one domain to another, also permitting a faster update of the Google index. As a consequence, Google will update its index to reflect the changes of a website URL. The changes will stay in effect for 180 days, while in this period of time, the pages will be indexed with their new URLs.
In order to be able to use the Change of Address feature, you will have to verify your new domain with Google Webmaster Tools service.
There are a few basic rules which must be followed when you move a website to a new domain. First, the 301 redirect directive must be implemented to permanently redirect the pages from the old domain name to the new one.
Also, the internal and external links have to point to the corresponding pages in the website published on the new domain name. For example, if the incoming links are not redirected correctly to the new location of the web pages, you can loose a lot of traffic, as well as points in search engine rankings.
There is also recommended to create a website sitemap and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools. In this way, Google spiders will have a better image of your new website structure (the new URLs and eventually new pages). The Google Webmaster Tools data will show how the website published on the new domain has been crawled.
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