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So, I have a niche blog started in June 2017. After the first year (with around one day before the expiration date), I have changed the domain, because the old one wasn't related to the niche. But, I didn't renew the first domain to make 301 redirects to the second one, because of the cost.

The problem is that now, the old articles don't show in the first page on Google anymore. I knew that this is going to happen if I don't renew the old domain, but I thought that three months are enough for them to recover their SEO rankings... Meanwhile, the articles written after the domain change started to show up in the first pages.

My question is: Do you think that this can be considered duplicate content? If not, how long should I wait until the old articles will show up again in the first search pages? Thanks!

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I don't believe this falls under the umbrella of duplicate content. To the best of my knowledge, Google's "duplicate content" penalty can only occur if content is live at more than one URL simultaneously - but your old URLs were taken down months ago.

An educated guess is that your old pages may have been ranking well due to backlinks from other websites, and when you moved to the new domain, the links broke.

I would recommend using a backlink checking tool like Moz Link Explorer to see if you can find backlinks to some of your URLs that were on your old domain. Then email the webmasters of the sites with the backlinks and ask them to update their links to point to the same pages on your new domain. It's a win-win because the link on their site is no longer dead, and your new domain gets the link juice that your old domain used to have.

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  • Thanks for your answer! It seems like I have only 2 backlinks, and those appeared after the domain change. Also, it's interesting that only the old URLs with the most views were taken down - some of the others are still showing up in results (but not on the first page).
    – user90178
    Oct 6, 2018 at 10:00
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    Old URLs are still showing in search results? If you click them, what happens? Did someone else buy the domain to catch the link juice, or is Google just extremely slow to remove the deleted pages from the index?
    – Maximillian Laumeister ♦
    Oct 6, 2018 at 16:21
  • The domain is dead. I think Google is just very slow. But, anyway, that link juice was of 20-30 views per day. But if it didn't dissapear, it would've be 40-60 :D
    – user90178
    Oct 6, 2018 at 17:13
  • @IulianOleniuc You could always use Google's Remove Outdated Content Tool on your old URLs to give Google the hint that they are no longer there and should be removed from the index. It's possible that Google still thinks the old URLs are still live! In that case it is possible you're being hit with a duplicate content issue.
    – Maximillian Laumeister ♦
    Oct 6, 2018 at 17:18
  • Wow, I never knew about this tool. I thought that if I change the domain of the property in Google Analytics is enough for Google to know that the site was moved. Thanks.
    – user90178
    Oct 6, 2018 at 18:09

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