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More about changing domain names
Recently, someone asked me about moving from one domain to another. He had read that Google recommends using a 301 redirect to let Googlebot know about the move, but he wasn't sure if he should do that. He wondered if Googlebot would follow the 301 to the new site, see that it contained the same content as the pages already indexed from the old site, and think it was duplicate content (and therefore not index it). He wondered if a 302 redirect would be a better option.
I told him that a 301 redirect was exactly what he should do. A 302 redirect tells Googlebot that the move is temporary and that Google should continue to index the old domain. A 301 redirect tells Googlebot that the move is permanent and that Google should start indexing the new domain instead. Googlebot won't see the new site as duplicate content, but as moved content. And that's exactly what someone who is changing domains wants.
He also wondered how long it would take for the new site to show up in Google search results. He thought that a new site could take longer to index than new pages of an existing site. I told him that if he noticed that it took a while for a new site to be indexed, it was generally because it took Googlebot a while to learn about the new site. Googlebot learns about new pages to crawl by following links from other pages and from Sitemaps. If Googlebot already knows about a site, it generally finds out about new pages on that site quickly, since the site links to the new pages.
I told him that by using a 301 to redirect Googlebot from the old domain to the new one and by submitting a Sitemap for the new domain, Googlebot could much more quickly learn about the new domain than it might otherwise. He could also let other sites that link to him know about the domain change so they could update their links.
The crawling and indexing processes are completely automated, so I couldn't tell him exactly when the domain would start showing up in results. But letting Googlebot know about the site (using a 301 redirect and a Sitemap) is an important first step in that process.
You can find out more about submitting a Sitemap in our documentation and you can find out more about how to use a 301 redirect by doing a Google search for [301 redirect].
Answers to Friday questions
Today, we wanted to review a few things that we get a lot of questions about.
I tried to verify and I got a message that said "pending verification". Why?
If we can't process the verification request right away, we'll add it to a queue and process it as soon as possible. While your request is in this queue, the status will show as pending. Once we successfully process your request, your site will show as verified. If the request is unsuccessful, you'll see a status of "not verified". You can read more about reasons the request might not be successful or take a look at our documentation.
I submitted my Sitemap and it now as a status of "Timed out downloading robots.txt". I don't have a robots.txt file on my site. What happened?
Any time we access your site, we first check to see if you have a robots.txt file that restricts our access. If we get a timeout from your server when we do this check, you'll see this message. This is probably a temporary problem. Once your server is accessible again, we will be able to see that you don't have a robots.txt file, and will then access your Sitemap. If you continue to see this error, make sure that your webserver is up and responding to requests.
I submitted my sitemap at http://www.example.com/mysite/ and verified it. But now you are asking me to verify at http://www.example.com/. I can't verify at that location because I don't have access. Why are you asking me to do this?
Some stats we can only show if you verify at the root level. If you don't have access to this location, we will show you all the information we are able to (such as errors we had crawling your site). Verification doesn't impact Sitemap submission or indexing in any way, and there is no penalty if you can't verify at the root level.
I've submitted my Sitemap, verified my site, and you've downloaded my Sitemap, but many of my stats show "Data is not available at the time time". Why?
We show you stats about what we know about your site. If we haven't yet crawled and indexed much of your site, we may not have many stats to show you. As we crawl more of your site and learn more about it, you'll start to see more stats.
More language support
We've added support for four more languages and a Sitemaps Google Group for each one:
Danish
Finnish
Norwegian
Swedish
As with the other languages we support, if you already use Google in one of these languages, you should see the user interface and documentation automatically. Otherwise, you can click the Preferences link from the Google home page and choose the language from the interface list.
Happy New Year!
We hope you all had a happy holiday and New Year's celebration. Over the past few weeks the team has been doing some planning for 2006 and reviewing your feedback from 2005. We are excited about the product improvements we have in store for the new year and hope that the new features and functionality will help you all reap the rewards of Sitemaps more easily and quickly.
We appreciate your continued enthusiasm and look forward to reading more of your feedback on the Google Sitemaps Group as we embark on the new year.
Wishing you all a very prosperous 2006,
The Google Sitemaps Team
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