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Recently we've change the name of our website to a new one.

Because the ranking on the last one was good (at the top) we wanted to carry this over to our new website - so I used the change of address feature inside the search console, set up the redirect and it work.

Turns out, this messed up our indexing abit.

Both websites built using wix.

For example: Old website title search.

"Old Website" "www.newwebsite.com"

Where if I search for "New Website" Nothing relating to our website appears in the search results until page 3?

When you search for the old website now, it's title is displayed along with the new website domain name - I don't want this. I'd like to remove all association with the old website.

Steps taken so far

  • 301-redirect still setup on old website (so if people do visit by direct like, they will be redirected to the new website domain)
  • Withdrawn change of address request in webmaster tools (this has worked to an extent) but our meta tags and previous indexing is still being linked to new domain

How do I remove all association with old website indexing, ranking, tags, etc.

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If I'm understanding your situation correctly, your old domain is still indexed in Google. When a user clicks on a result from your old domain, they are 301 redirected to the page on your new domain.

It will take some time for Google to convert all of your old domain pages to your new domain pages.

This is because Google has to crawl every single page on your old domain in order to realize that page has been 301 redirected. That's just how Google works.

As Google crawls the indexed pages on the old domain and sees that it has been 301 redirected, it will reindex those pages as results for your new domain.

How long it takes for Google to crawl all of the pages on your old domain depends on a lot of factors. How many pages are on your site? The more pages the longer it will take. Is your site crawled frequently by Google or not as often as you might like?

It will take a while for Google to crawl all of the pages. But as it crawls more and more pages and discovers all of the 301 redirects, it will pass your link juice and domain authority over to your new domain with each crawling update. It will pass your link juice and index status one by one as each old page is recrawled.

Your new domain might not be ranking for the search term of your brand. And as Google crawls your old pages and updates the 301 redirect your domain should start ranking higher and higher in the search. But getting your domain to the top of search also depends on a lot of factors. Now that you've switched domains and brands, there's no guarantee that you will rank #1 for your brand term anymore.

If your new domain brand name is a competitive keyword, it may be difficult to rank for it. If it's a random word that does not have much competition, it may take a little while for you to rise to the top.

Part of Google's algorithm for ranking a brand's search term is based on whether it believes you are the #1 source for that brand/word. As it discovers your new site more and more you should begin to rank higher again. And this will come in time once all of the 301 redirected pages have been updated.

If your old domain was a powerful brand with a lot of users, those users were probably searching for your brand and clicking on your result in Google. This pushed you to the top of Google rankings. Now that you have a new domain and brand not as many people are searching for you in Google and clicking on your result. Because of this, Google has not yet determined that you are #1 for your position.

All of this may just take some time. But you'll most likely get there if everything has been done right.

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  • Great insight into how google indexing works - thanks. Although my problem was that when I performed the change of address, my old title tags, where getting displayed on my new title tags, which made it look really messy, so I withdrew the change. I've also just discovered that some of the 301 redirects are not on all of my pages (as we're using wix, it's very problematic to change these things). Also, the old website was on wix using their dns settings, now it's back with the hosting company and they set up the 301. I wonder is it because the website is completely down on wix?
    – cala
    Feb 27, 2018 at 14:56
  • tl;dr when we removed it from wix, our mail systems on our old emails also went down. I then had to set up MX records on the domain provider (register365) to get them working again
    – cala
    Feb 27, 2018 at 14:58
  • If Google is showing your new domain in their SERP using the old title tags from your old domain then this is probably because they are indexing the new domain page you told them to, but haven't crawled the page on the new domain to get your new title tags
    – Michael d
    Feb 27, 2018 at 16:53

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