Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical
-
We are doing a "soft migration" of a website. (Actually it is a merger of two websites).
We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days. These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site. Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's. Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?
-
Well, rel=canonical will technically work fine, however in this case if you are migrating the entire site (presuming you have all pages on the old domain, going somewhere on the new domain, I would essentially setup 301 redirects from the old domain to the new domain.
I don't think you should do anything in the webmaster console. Just remove all the pages from the old domain and setup 301s from old domain to new domain. Google Webmaster Console Site migration IMO is for scenarios like you have yourdomain.net and you acquire the domain yourdomain.com and want to migrate the domain from .com to .net or if you change the brand name to yourbrandname.net or so on.
Does that make sense ? I hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does using a canonical with ?utm_source=gmb cause any issues?
All of our URLs in Google My Business are tagged with ?utm_source=gmb. This way when people click on it within a Google Map listing, knowledge graph, etc we know it came from there. I'm assuming using a canonical on all ?_utm_source _pages (we have others, including some in the index) won't cause any problems with this, correct? Since they're not technically traditional organic SERPs? Dumb question I know, but better safe than sorry. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces1 -
If I'm using a compressed sitemap (sitemap.xml.gz) that's the URL that gets submitted to webmaster tools, correct?
I just want to verify that if a compressed sitemap file is being used, then the URL that gets submitted to Google, Bing, etc and the URL that's used in the robots.txt indicates that it's a compressed file. For example, "sitemap.xml.gz" -- thanks!
Technical SEO | | jgresalfi0 -
Bing webmaster tools incorrectly showing missing title and description tags
Hey all, Was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue. Bing is showing title and description tags missing in the head of my wordpress blog. I can't seem to find any documentation on this. Thanks, Roman
Technical SEO | | Dynata_panel_marketing0 -
Canonical homepage link uses trailing slash while default homepage uses no trailing slash, will this be an issue?
Hello, 1st off, let me explain my client in this case uses BigCommerce, and I don't have access to the backend like most other situations. So I have to rely on BG to handle certain issues. I'm curious if there is much of a difference using domain.com/ as the canonical url while BG currently is redirecting our domain to domain.com. I've been using domain.com/ consistently for the last 6 months, and since we switches stores on Friday, this issue has popped up and has me a bit worried that we'll loose somehow via link juice or overall indexing since this could confuse crawlers. Now some say that the domain url is fine using / or not, as per - https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/community/q/trailing-slash-and-rel-canonical But I also wanted to see what you all felt about this. What says you?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
What is the difference between "Referring Pages" and "Total Backlinks" [on Ahrefs]?
I always thought they were essentially the same thing myself but appears there may be a difference? Any one care to help me out? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
How much will changing IP addresses impact SEO?
So my company is upgrading its Internet bandwidth. However, apparently the vendor has said that part of the upgrade will involve changing our IP address. I've found two links that indicate some care needs to be taken to make sure our SEO isn't harmed: http://followmattcutts.com/2011/07/21/protect-your-seo-when-changing-ip-address-and-server/ http://www.v7n.com/forums/google-forum/275513-changing-ip-affect-seo.html Assuming we don't use an IP address that has been blacklisted by Google for spamming or other black hat tactics, how problematic is it? (Note: The site hasn't really been aggressively optimized yet - I started with the company less than two weeks ago, and just barely got FTP and CMS access yesterday - so honestly I'm not too worried about really messing up the site's optimization, since there isn't a lot to really break.)
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
Rel="external"
Hi all, I got a link and its off a site and marked up with rel="external". Is this a followed or nofollowed link? Does it pass link juice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sharer0 -
How to structure rel=canonical for a e commerce site
Hello, So I have searched the Q & A , Google, the zen cart forum and at this point I am looking for some one to give a concrete answer on what I should do. There is a lot of different opinions on " rel=canonical" and how to apply it , since there are many other variable in place. I have a zen cart site. I am using the latest 1.3.9 version. The default setting ( seem to me) uses the rel=canonical to point back to the specific link product or category respectively. Most of the time I have two scenarios. 1. Main category ---> Sub category----> Product 2. Main Category----> Product I'll give an example http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards ---main category http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards/acrylic-awards sub category http://www.perfectindesign.com/awards/acrylic-awards/slanted-award product (this example has three sub categories with maybe 12 products in one 4 in the second and 5 in the third) From looking at the source code for each url it the rel=canonical just points back to its own url. I want to avoid competing against my self, for the example above keyword "acrylic awards" so should the use of the re=canonical be changes site wide to have products point back to sub categories when they exist and have products point back to main categories when no sub categories exist? I am very new to seo, specifically eCommerce seo. If you have experience and have done this to a site you manage for a client or your own please advise how to proceed. Also if I'm missing some thing that will give me a better understanding of the bigger seo picture that would be great. Thanks, Yevgeny
Technical SEO | | Yevgeny0