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I realize that other forms of this question have been asked and answered (and marked as duplicate) here before.

However, I haven't seen a question that responds to my particular use case, which is to move a site to a new domain AND move it's content to a subdirectory on that new domain.

For example, I want oldsite.com to point to newsite.com/oldsite.

I've placed the 301 redirect on the old site to redirect to the new domain and subfolder, but the Change of Address tool requires that the redirect be to the root of the new domain.

Is the best practice here to temporarily change the redirect to point to the root, just to get past step 2, then change it back, or is there another option?

Thanks.

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    Yeah. There is another option. Ignore the Google move domain thingy. You do not need it. The 301 should be fine. If you chose later to delete the old domain, then make sure that enough time has passed and change as many back links as possible. You may also chose to add more back links to the profile to replace the ones you would lose. There is always disruption when you chose to use another domain, however, you can minimize the disruption and the effect of changing/losing the old domain. – closetnoc Oct 14 '15 at 1:36
  • OK, knowing that others consider that a valid approach I'm fine with it. Thanks. – evanmcd Oct 14 '15 at 15:26
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If you need to change the URL of a page as it is shown in search engine results, I recommend that you use a server-side 301 redirect. This is the best way to ensure that users and search engines are directed to the correct page. The 301 status code means that a page has permanently moved to a new location.

Best practice is that if you want to change the redirect to point to the root, just do it. But make sure that you keep old site up for few weeks too. You can ignore the google if you want, but you will need to put up bunch of back links etc.

Just put the redirection on root. That's the best solution.

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  • OK, I've got the redirect in there of course. I'll just ignore the Google Change of Address Tool then. Thanks. – evanmcd Oct 14 '15 at 15:26

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