Monday, August 24, 2009

Change of Address tool to tell Google about your new URL

If you’re planning to move your site to a new domain, use the Change of Address tool to tell Google about your new URL. This will help us update our index faster and smooth the transition for your users.

For best results, follow these steps:

  1. Set up the new siteReview our guidelines for moving your site to a new domain. Set up your content on your new domain, then make sure all internal links point to the new domain.
  2. Redirect all traffic from the old siteUse a 301 redirect to permanently redirect the pages on your old site to your new site. This tells users and search engines that your site has permanently moved. Ask webmasters to update their links to point to your new domain and make sure incoming links to your old site are redirected correctly using the 301 redirects.
  3. Add your new site to Webmaster ToolsMake sure you have added and verified your new domain.
  4. Tell us the URL of your new domain
    New URL for www.vijaykumar.info:

    After submitting the change of address, check your Webmaster Tools data periodically to see if your new site has been crawled and indexed (if you have a Sitemap, one way to determine this is by checking Sitemap details for the new site to see how many of the pages have been crawled and indexed).