Welcome back, this is John Locke and today I’m showing you how to do a change of website address
in Google Search Console. Now I've talked about this before in other videos. I talked
about this before in the video, “Our experience with changing our domain name” and then also in
another video called, “Don't make this mistake when you change your domain name”. But what
I want to show you today is how to actually do a change of website address [in Search Console]. Now
this is predicated on the fact that you have already--if you had an old domain,
you're all already forwarding that traffic to your new domain. So, if you add an old domain,
if somebody types that in, then it goes to the new domain [via 301 redirect]. But the last step that
you want to do is, a website change of address in Google Search Console. So, this is the old version
of Google Search Console. If you have a website that you're doing the domain name change on,
this is what you do. This is a client that we did some one-off work for. It was a one-time
project. And one of the things we found when we were doing SEO for them is, this site here,
Boathouse at Saugatuck dot com--this is a restaurant that's part of a facility--where
there's a fitness club, there's a rowing club, and there is a restaurant in this place,
ok? This is in Westport, Connecticut. Now one of the things I found when I was doing the SEO
audit for this particular business is they had previously had another domain name. This is
not the original domain name of this business. The original domain name of this business was,
Boathouse CT dot com. So what we [had to] do is, we acquired this domain name,
and if you type that in, it'll go to Boathouse at Saugatuck dot com. And I'll show you right there,
see? You can see that it is already forwarding to that domain. I’ll show you one more time. If
you type in “Boathouse CT dot com”, and we're doing a forward at the domain registrar level,
so it goes to that site, and goes to the new site. We did pick this up as well, because when
we did a check in Ahrefs, these are domains that appear to have links going to that old domain. So,
these grayed out ones [links] are no follow [links]. So, these two are no followed links.
This [link], these [links] are followed links--all here--these are all follow links. So yeah, it was
worth picking up, just to forward those links to this new site, because it will help it out a
little bit. But what I'm going to show you, is how to do the change of address [in Search Console].
So what you're going to want to do is, select a property--and you can see that we already have
that Boathouse CT--and then what you're going to want to do is, go to this gear icon up here,
in the old Search Console, and click “change of address”, all right? Okay, next pick a site from
the list. Okay, so we've picked the Boathouse at Saugatuck, that is the domain that we want to say
that—the old domain is now this new domain. Then confirm that the 301 redirects work properly. Oh,
we couldn't crawl your site—Uh oh, I did the wrong one. You want the--we want the
www [version of the domain], okay? That's what's wrong. Okay, let's try it again.
Okay, yes! Request indexing, come on now. Indexing requested rejected? No, why is that? It will only
be indexed if certain criteria are met. Only indexed URLs can have enhancements, okay. So,
this is interesting. Anyway, this has been a long time since this particular site was in the index,
and apparently none of the pages are indexed anymore. It says we couldn't crawl your site.
Check that Googlebot can crawl the root of your site using “Fetch as Google”. Let's try it again,
one more time. Really? Use URL inspection yep, right, do it.
So, this crawl anomaly failed. Crawl anomaly: only indexed URLs can have enhancements,
okay. Okay so, that's what's going on here. It's been so long since it's actually been crawled,
the links will automatically forward to this other site over here. But Google's not going
to say “change of address”. I think it's just basically said, “This is a dead domain.” It's
what it seems like to me. So, let me see if I can find another example. Okay, I'll show you another,
what I'm going to do is--I'm going to show you another couple of sites where we actually did
this [change of website address]. Here's one right here. This was an old URL “BMEquip dot com”. This
was actually a client of mine who bought this business, and now it's forwarding to “Raptor
Blasting Solutions dot com”. You can see that the 301 redirects worked properly, and verification
methods are still present--because again, it was a site that was still alive, and then we
forwarded it to another website. So, I think that is something that needs to be in place, and why
this last test couldn't work [properly]. Because for “Boathouse CT dot com”, there's no site there
anymore. It actually disappeared, and they made a new site, “Boathouse at Saugatuck, dot com”. So,
there's no way to verify it in the new Search Console. I think that's what happened there. So,
what this is--what happens when it actually goes through the steps you confirms to make
sure that it forwards correctly, and that the verification methods are still present on the
old site, I guess, and then you submit the change of address, and then when it's done,
boom, you have a new site. This old site is basically equivalent to the new site. Let's
see really quick, though. Let's do this. Site, colon, search. Let's see what happens here. So,
it still has, interestingly enough, it still has these in the index as BMEquip dot com, 556
results [pages indexed]. Okay, this still has it in the index as URLs that has crawled
and “Raptor Blasting Solutions dot com” has 161 [pages indexed]. So,
that's really interesting. Maybe it hasn't crawled all these yet? Which is odd, but I could show you
one more. I'm going to show you one more example. But first, I'm going to show you this. Here's our
old site , lockedowndesign.com has 437 results [pages indexed], okay? But this is what it's
forwarding to now, “Lockedown SEO dot com”, which has 580 results [pages indexed]. So,
you notice there's more results on this one. So, I think that Google is accepting more of these as
our actual destination now. At some point, it kind of recognizes that these are where it should be
going [correct, new domain]. Let's show one more, okay? So, I'm going to show you one last one. This
is from my own site, with the change of address. So, the www lockedowndesign.com pick a new site
from the list—www Lockedown SEO dot com. Confirm that the 301 redirects worked properly, which they
did. The verification methods were still present. It was the same website, I just changed a domain
name and submitted the change of address request. So, I did that. Yeah, like I said,
that bump seems to have helped a little bit. So, this is what you're looking for in the old search
console--this gear icon--click “change of address” to follow those steps. That's how you do it. But
you want to make sure that you've done this after you've done the 301 redirects, because that's
right there. Pick a new site the 301 redirects are already in place, and then it checks everything.
I think that first example that I showed you it didn't it wasn't able to crawl it because for one,
too much time had passed - there is no existing site there anymore. The site actually dropped all
the way out of the index, and then the new site came in. So, I think that that's the real reason,
because I've never had a problem in any other case where I've done this. It's the only time
I've ever seen that particular error. So anyway, I hope that was informative. My name is John Locke.
My business is Lockedown SEO. I'm here every single day making videos on SEO, and I hope you
got something from this. I'll be here tomorrow. That's all I have for now. Until next time, peace.