Maybe this isn't the right forum about domain moving, so please move it if i placed it wrong. It is mostly related to letting Google know I've moved domains, so it is Google related. Anyways, how should I let the search engines know i've moved to a new domain? Currently I have three websites, which I will move into one. One is about the Xbox 360, other PS3 and yet another about the Wii, and now I want them all in a new domain. So, instead of three sites, it will be like mydomain.com/ps3, etc. Two sites have a PR2, one a PR3. How can I move this to the new domain? I read something about 301 redirects in the .htaccess, but should i point everything from the old domains just to the mainpage of the new one, or should all the old urls redirect to the new articles on the site (so olddomain.com/news/4334/article-name.html will point to newdomain.com/news/4334/article-name.html, or just to newdomain.com)? Is there anything else to to besides these 301 redirects to make certain the search engines will know i've permanently moved domains? Also, not really related to the above. How does google like the urls best? Currently i use domain.com/news/game-name/3434/article-title.html, but in the new domain i use domain.com/news/3434/article-title/, so it is a bit shorter and it has no .html extension. Is this better, worse, or doesn't it really matter? Hope someone can help me with this, 'cause I'm finally being indexed in google a bit better and i dont really want to start all over.
Use .htaccess redirect from your old domain, there is no way to transfer page rank but this will help you a little after a while .
there is not permanent solution to change over the page rank, you have to work hard to get new link exchanges again for that new domain.
Not true. As long as long as the domain and the 301 redirect remain in place, the PR and ranking value will transfer to the target site. Depending upon the number of links, it is a good idea to try and have all those links updated to reflect the new URL. Dave
Make sure you point the old sites to the deep urls for example www.xbox.com goes to www.newsite.com/xbox
K, thanks for the replies. Guess I'll have to do some mod_rewrite then to make the old article links go to the new ones