What if an old site goes into PENDINGDELETE status
-
Hi,
I have an old domain which accidentally was set as PENDINGDELETE by the registry. It's now not resolving to any ip address any more.
Actually I was relocating from the old domain to a new domain. Just one month before it become PENDINGDELETE, I have submitted a "Chang of Address" in Google Webmasters Tools as well as setup the web server to 301 redirect all urls on old domain to the new domain.
I have some sub-questions for this case:
1. What will happen to the effectiveness of the "Change of Address" in Google Webmasters Tool after old domain is dropped. As a domain is deleted, I have no way to maintain the verified ownership of the it in case Google asks me to reverify.
2. Suppose during last month before it's deleted, Googlebot had crawled 50% of urls on old domains, detected the 301 redirects and save them to its index. When Googlebot crawls those 50% urls again after the old domain is deleted, as those urls are not resolving to any web server, will Googlebot retain the last 301 redirects or drop the 301 redirects as well?
3. After a domain is deleted, how soon will Google purge urls on old domain from its index?
Thank you.
Best regards
Jack Zhao
-
When a domain goes into pending delete status it's DNS have been usually deactivated for a while, generally since the domain entered it's redemption grace period (depending on the domain extension and the registrar).
It usually takes some time for a 301 to 'settle', so I would renew the old domain and keep it redirected for a while, here you'll find a compendium of data on the subject.
The thing is, if the domain has gone into pending delete status, the domain will be deleted soon (5 day period) and you won't be able to renew it. You could use a back order service to try and snatch it, or you could try to do it by hand if the domain is not valuable.
1- When the domain expires (probably sooner), you will loose access to the domain hence the address change will stop working, you'll see that in Webmaster Tools.
2- The pages will cease to exist and so will the redirections, the advise is to keep control of the old domain for at least 180 days.
3- It depends on several factors, like the amount of indexed pages, the amount of links pointing to them, crawling rate, etc. but for an average site it usually takes a couple of months for it to completely disappear from the index (can be a lot faster though).
-
Those are all good questions and I'm hoping we get some good answers. In the meantime, I believe you can still renew your domain if it is pending delete. Have you tried renewing it at this point so that you can maintain the redirects?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Old site name showing in SERPs
Hi all, We've recently re-launched one of our sites with a substantial redesign, refreshed content, meta data, descriptions and functionality. We noticed in SERPs that some of the page titles are showing the old name for the site, which hasn't been used for a few years and the site's been through a few updates and a URL change since then. All the meta titles showing up as they should in crawls through Search Console and Moz and it's my understanding that if Google were pulling a cached version of a title it would have gone for a more recently cached one? Any thoughts on why Google's turned back the clock on our site's name would be greatly appreciated! -Jamie
Technical SEO | | JamieCMF0 -
Site address change: new site isn't showing up in Google, old site is gone.
We just transitioned mccacompanies.com to confluentstrategies.com. The problem is that when I search for the old name, the old website doesn't come up anymore to redirect people to the new site. On the local card, Google has even taken off the website altogether. (I'm currently still trying to gain access to manage the business listing) When I search for confluent strategies, the website doesn't come up at all. But if I use the site: operator, it is in the index. Basically, my client has effectively disappeared off the face of the Google. (In doing other name changes, this has never happened to me before) What can I do?
Technical SEO | | MichaelGregory0 -
Duplicate content on job sites
Hi, I have a question regarding job boards. Many job advertisers will upload the same job description to multiple websites e.g. monster, gumtree, etc. This would therefore be viewed as duplicate content. What is the best way to handle this if we want to ensure our particular site ranks well? Thanks in advance for the help. H
Technical SEO | | HiteshP0 -
Mobile site ranking instead of/as well as desktop site in desktop SERPS
I have just noticed that the mobile version of my site is sometimes ranking in the desktop serps either instead of as well as the desktop site. It is not something that I have noticed in the past as it doesn't happen with the keywords that I track, which are highly competitive. It is happening for results that include our brand name, e.g '[brand name][search term]'. The mobile site is served with mobile optimised content from another URL. e.g wwww.domain.com/productpage redirects to m.domain.com/productpage for mobile. Sometimes I am only seen the mobile URL in the desktop SERPS, other times I am seeing both the desktop and mobile URL for the same product. My understanding is that the mobile URL should not be ranking at all in desktop SERPS, could we be being penalised for either bad redirects or duplicate content? Any ideas as to how I could further diagnose and solve the problem if you do believe that it could be harming rankings?
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
Index inactive mobile site?
Hi, I have a question wrt Mobile version of a site. Previously, we had a mobile site which is no longer active and there are possibilities of resurrecting it in future, so we have a 302 redirect which points to the homepage (desktop version). Currently, the mobile site is indexed by the search engines. To avoid the duplicate content issue, is it recommended to use robots.txt and block the spiders from mobile content or apply 301 redirect until the mobile site is up and running, OR continue with the 302 redirect. Any suggestions will be helpful. Thanks,
Technical SEO | | RaksG0 -
Crawling a subfolder with a dev site
I am trying to set up a campaign where I am crawling a subfolder of our main site where I have dev version of the new site. However, even though the new site resolves and I have included the full resolving URL but the crawl results come back saying that only one page has been crawled. The site has had a protected block on it for a period of time but this has now been removed. Any ideas? Thanks Nick
Technical SEO | | Total_Displays0 -
Xenu Alternative for Large Sites
We're launching a new site and we're trying to crawl it to check for any problems. It's millions of pages and Xenu seems to start encountering errors as the numbers mount past 500,000. Does anyone know of an alternative, free or paid, that could handle the size better?
Technical SEO | | eLocalusa0 -
Impact of 401s on Site Rankings
Will having 401s on a site negatively impact rankings? (e.g. 401s thrown from a social media sharing icon)
Technical SEO | | Christy-Correll0