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[Eric]

Hey I asked this question in another thread but it was off-topic and I was told to open up a new thread. My original question was this: “I recently changed my domain and I was told that I needed to perform the ‘change of address’ in google’s search console to finalize the move, and I was just wondering how important it is to actually perform this change of address? I decided to do it a few days ago but it’s still pending and I can’t set up any of my redirects until it’s finished, so I was just wondering if you think it’s necessary. Furthermore, is it possible that the previous XML sitemap error delayed the process?”

Now I was told that I shouldn’t have started this process until all of my issues have been resolved, just to make sure that no further issues will be reflected in Google cache when it re index and cached your site again, since any previous error may end up conflicting with the process.

Now I was just wondering, considering that I started the google change of address while having XML sitemap issues, would you recommend that I withdraw the change of address process and start a new one? Or will the process work itself out now that my website issues have been fixed? I know it’s not really an X question, but I need to change my old domain’s redirects to finalize my website, and I can’t actually do that until google’s change of address process is complete, and so I just want to make sure that it’s actually working.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Eric]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Rupok]

Hi there,

Thanks for writing in! It depends how rich your site was before. That is if you had lots of visitor with lots of pages or posts then you should keep the URL same because some visitors still might land on your site from different source and they will get 404 if the links are broken. But if you think there is no such possibilities and you want to start over then just go with your new site and content.

Cheers!

[Eric]

Thanks for the reply.

In my case, the website under the previous domain hadn’t been live for very long so I’m not worried about any 404 issues. The reason I’m doing this is because on the first page of google my old domain is showing up and for some reason my new domain isn’t. I’m basically just trying to remove the old domain from the first page and replace it with the new one.

So would you recommend that I withdraw and restart google’s change of address now that my issues are fixed? Or should I not do the change of address and just hope my new domain supersedes my old domain with time.

Again I know this isn’t an X issue but your advice is valuable and really appreciated.

Thanks!

[Lely]

Hi Eric,

Please check this thread discussion regarding the same issue:
https://moz.com/community/q/domain-changed-5-months-ago-still-see-search-results-on-old-domain

The following link might help you too:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en

[Author]

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