
A domain move disaster - lucabenazzi
http://www.paulingraham.com/domain-move-disaster.html
======
gist
Guess what? It shouldn't be so hard period and none of the things that the OP
had to do that were mentioned should even need to be done at all. Google
should offer a way to make a changes like this similar to the way that you can
change an account name or a username at other businesses. If they have to
charge a fee for this, fine. If they want to put in conditions so it can't be
abused or gamed, fine. But all of this dancing on eggshells in order to please
a company that has (for these types of things) no accountability is over the
top. I am surprised that nobody has done any kind of class action lawsuit
against google for some of their arbitrary and difficult practices or tried to
get lawmakers involved (as much as I hate both options sometimes you have to
pull the trigger...)

Edit: And you shouldn't need hours and days of test prep, anxiety or needing
to hire SEO experts to pull it off either. Ridiculous.

~~~
nailer
Google webmaster tools are awful. They treat the regular domain and www as
well as https / http as separate, so every website shows up as four sites.

~~~
zippergz
That is 100% intentional. Those could all technically be served by different
machines and controlled by different people. It's an abundance of caution in
making sure that you can only change settings and view stats for things you've
proven you have control over.

~~~
nailer
I've proven I have control over all of them. I could also happily tell Google
they're the same if it can't work this out for itself.

------
rhapsodic
Did anyone else click on this thinking it was at paulgraham.com?

~~~
danso
I noticed the difference but thought that maybe it was a parody, like Paul In
Graham...I honestly did not expect to see "Paul Ingraham", even though that's
not a wildly rare surname.

Reminds me of the "Michelin Guides" and "Michel In Guides" [hilarious] fiasco.
[1]

[1] [http://www.eater.com/2013/2/7/6483963/michelin-guide-
obvious...](http://www.eater.com/2013/2/7/6483963/michelin-guide-obviously-
not-happy-about-prank-website-michel-in)

~~~
Splines
Similarly, Mike Rowe Soft.

------
maxmcd
Related or not, this is certainly against the "rules":
[https://www.painscience.com/donate-by-
linking.php](https://www.painscience.com/donate-by-linking.php)

~~~
sixQuarks
Why is that against the rules? Asking for links is not against the rules.

~~~
BadCookie
Here's a summary of Google's position on the subject:
[http://searchengineland.com/google-its-unnatural-to-even-
ask...](http://searchengineland.com/google-its-unnatural-to-even-ask-for-
links-to-your-site-224802)

It's not very clear what sort of asking is permitted, but I'm pretty sure that
the sort of asking that Paul Ingraham is doing is not ok. He's specifically
asking people to create links in a way that is unnatural.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Sure google hate it as it games the system. You pay for links and your site
rises up the natural search. This eats into their AdWords service and pollutes
natural search.

But big websites that aren't ad driven use paid links to fund the site. We
were paying big sites (think three letter domain names, top five newspaper
sites, etc) for links. Say a paper writes an article on car insurance -
wouldn't it be nice if they linked to our customers site and 'forgot' to
mention a big competitor. Money will make that happen.

So how can google punish these big sites? They are put in an impossible
situation.

------
Uptrenda
This is one of the reasons why I would probably never, ever, ever try build a
business around any kind of content marketing (as controversial as that
sounds.) I know that content marketing is all the rage at the moment and few
books would advise against doing it for customer acquisition: but there is
always that hidden, implicit assumption with this technique that the organic
traffic you build up belongs to you (which is provably false.) It's quite
deceptive to think of organic traffic as an asset when Google can take it away
at any time (and often without even realizing.) Instead: I would much rather
use explicit paid channels and relationships with advertisers then depend on
the good graces of Google for my conversions.

I hope that OPs business can recover in time and thanks for posting this. You
will probably save a lot of people thousands of dollars in the long run.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
I think you need to make a distinction between "a business around content
marketing" and having content marketing be one of the many marketing channels
for gaining users.

Even if you entirely set aside the hope that you'll eventually gain some
organic search traffic, content marketing in the business and startup space
still typically has a return 10x of what paid does since it tends to be so
much more self selecting, shared on social, etc.

------
trifecta16
"If you have a blog, you can improve my chances by linking to
PainScience.com."

Google doesn't take well to people asking for links to their site. Asking for
links, buying for links, or spamming your link is something that Google
doesn't like. Just from this, I can already see your expertise in SEO.
Although having this post at the top of Hacker News is going to help this a
bit.

Anyone with basic SEO knowledge could have told you the pitfalls of
transferring domains. This reads closer to trying to blame Google for your
lack of traffic, rather than what you learned from the experience. From my
experience, Google's algorithm is finicky, but if your site is sound and has
good content you have little to fear.

~~~
mikeg8
> Anyone with basic SEO knowledge could have told you the pitfalls of
> transferring domains

nope. A lot more people have "basic" SEO knowledge than could execute a
seamless TLD transition.

~~~
trifecta16
I think we would want to redefine the term basic SEO knowledge here. When I
say basic, I mean an SEO coordinator could tell you what's wrong. From reading
the article, the user clearly doesn't have basic SEO knowledge.

Knowing what a 301 redirect hardly counts as basic SEO knowledge. Having
access to your webmaster tools doesn't count as basic SEO knowledge. My view
of basic may be flawed, as I do work in the industry, but I can say that
running around complaining about how it's Google's fault and asking for "link
donations" isn't going to get you your results.

------
michaelbuckbee
What's not captured in this writeup is SERP rank (if for equivalent terms the
new site is ranking better or worse than previously), it's only showing the
resulting traffic.

I wonder what affect people seeing the domain "PainScience" instead of
"SaveYourself" in the results caused.

However, it's a near certainty that you're going to lose rank and traffic with
a domain name move. Estimates vary but 10-20% isn't an unreasonable
guesstimate even if everything goes right.

I can also confirm the deep weirdness of GWT and how it treats sites
(seriously, it considered [http://domain.com](http://domain.com) and
[https://domain.com](https://domain.com) as two entirely separate sites).

~~~
chrisseaton
But [http://domain.com](http://domain.com) and
[https://domain.com](https://domain.com) are two entirely different sites
aren't they? They could serve totally unrelated content.

~~~
Buge
You could also serve entirely different sites to chrome and to firefox.

~~~
artursapek
I'm sure people try doing this with Googlebot... serving different content to
it than to real "users". I wonder if Google tries to detect this by spoofing
its user agent sometimes.

~~~
scott_karana
I suspect it does, _all the time_ , since it would get gamed frequently with
fake filler content.

~~~
artursapek
It's really fascinating all of the problems they must have to juggle in order
to make their shit work. :D

------
sixQuarks
This guy actually has some of the highest quality writing I've ever read on a
subject. I used it to help my back pain couple of years ago.

If there is anyone at Google reading this, give this guy a manual boost or
something, you won't find better quality info anywhere.

------
mrcrassic
> By early 2015, I had an overwhelming impression that Google is a much
> sloppier technology than I ever imagined.

After working there, I can definitely agree with this. Their engineering chops
are pretty high but not only are there tons of bugs with their products
(though complexity can cause that), but they also have very poor documentation
for everything, so if you run into an awesome bug, your likeliness for finding
an obvious solution without having to pnig the team responsible is about as
reliable as a coin toss.

------
nchelluri
If I was to try to take steps to try to avoid this the next time around, it
sounds it would be, if moving an HTTP site to a new domain using HTTPS:

    
    
      # move to new URL but keep using HTTP 
      # wait for search rank to reach parity, maybe leave it for some buffer
      # upgrade site to use HTTPS
    

This sounds like it might prevent the issues with migration in GWT.

------
rgbrgb
We saw a similar traffic dip moving openlistings.co -> openlistings.com.
Really thought that the domain mover tool in google webmaster tools would have
taken care of it but we were unpleasantly surprised that it didn't. Luckily
for us, we pulled the band-aid off pretty early and only saw like a 2 week dip
before we were beating the previous numbers.

Slightly unrelated but on the topic of SEO in JS SPAs, Google did a really
good job with it's latest iteration of the JS crawler [0]. When we made the
switch from sending pre-rendered HTML to treating the crawler like a regular
user, our rankings actually improved because initial pageload time went from a
few seconds to sub 300ms.

[0]:
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/10/deprecati...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/10/deprecating-
our-ajax-crawling-scheme.html)

------
zippergz
No idea if this is the cause, and I agree the process shouldn't be this
opaque, but "pain relief" is a pretty big category of spam. It's possible that
those keywords in the domain are detrimental.

------
lucabenazzi
Guys, thanks for your comments. I've submitted the link as I've been outraged
by this story. I find Paul's website to be a goldmine of carefully selected,
beautifully written information that can save people lots of pain (well,
literally...). It's hard to say what the solution to cases like this should
be, but I believe until the technology gets easier to handle, there should be
some sort of regulations, or companies should take the initiative of handling
such situations if it's their responsibility. Search engines can't be like
black boxes, there's people whose business relies on them and like someone
said, I'd expect a level of automation that makes it easy to deal with such
scenarios. A content creator shouldn't even worry about all this stuff at all!
We are talking about a simple domain migration, that's it. The "Donate by
linking" page was published only a week ago, so even though it's a good point
trying to address that as well, it can't be the reason for the disaster.

------
toast0
TLDR: Never change a url, ever

------
musesum
Hasn't Google evolved from the original backrub algo? More implicit links than
anchor tags, with user personalized results. Wouldn't local browser history
get clobbered? My browser autofills URLs; typing in "n" autocompletes with
"[http://news.ycombinator.com"](http://news.ycombinator.com")

Or maybe it is the brand? PainScience is a rather negative in that it focuses
on the problem, whereas SaveYourself focuses on the solution.

------
gesman
I observed similar experience making similar move for my blog
(idreamcatcher.com -> presentlove.com)

The reason I think is there is some sort of "grandfathered" organic ranking
component that belongs to old domain but is not being transferred to new
domain, no matter what recommended practices are followed and no matter what
Google says.

~~~
nreece
Apparently, "domain age is an insignificant factor that really carries very
little weight in the Google algorithm" \--Matt Cutts (ref:
[http://rapidwebseo.com/matt-cutts-does-domain-age-really-
mat...](http://rapidwebseo.com/matt-cutts-does-domain-age-really-matter.php))

~~~
gesman
Well actual reality and Matt Cutt's words are contradictory.

Besides, "insignificant" != 0

What's "insignificant" for Matt Cutts and Google could be quite significant
for someone's family.

------
hashberry
I've read similar horror stories. Everyone should be aware of this penalties
and the numerous steps that need to be taken:

[https://moz.com/blog/seo-guide-how-to-properly-move-
domains](https://moz.com/blog/seo-guide-how-to-properly-move-domains)

------
jobu
The main issue seems to be that Google Webmaster Tools isn't handling HTTPS
yet.

Major shortcoming on Google's part, but why not add HTTP support to the new
domain and see if that helps? (based on the article it didn't sound like it
had been tried)

------
rdl
Why would you make a change like that in November/December, assuming you're
selling something which is popular with consumers (or with calendar-year
focused businesses with budgets to spend)?

~~~
paulingraham
My business is quite oblivious to the season. But, if anything, December sales
have always been on the slow side: people seem to think less about self-help
info for pain problems at this time of year.

------
ikeboy
I've seen Black hat SEO tips saying you should set up a network of sites, one
with fake/paid links to it, the second a redirect of the first, and some other
stuff I don't recall right now. The point was that a ban of the domain would
let you change to a new domain and keep all the paid links, and it would
somehow fool Google's algorithm.

Just saying, there are legitimate reasons Google may have decided to penalize
domain names. People do abuse them.

------
hardwaresofton
Why not just keep both domains?

~~~
nostromo
The new site would be marked as duplicate content and the original would rank
higher.

~~~
schwap
What if you returned a 301 to the new URL? You'd think Google would have logic
to get that kind of hint.

~~~
dimfeld
The old domain (saveyourself.ca) mentioned in the article does do this.

------
blairanderson
absolutely everyone clicks thinking paulgraham.com

------
viraptor
So I have to ask... why not try to revert after 90% drop? It can hardly get
any worse.

~~~
paulingraham
I came close to reverting! But I was assured by my consultant that it was
temporary, and I was strongly committed to the brand upgrade. And... boiling
frog. The 90% losses phase was relatively brief. When things started to
improve a bit, I assumed they would continue to improve. By the time it was
clear that it wasn’t going to keep improving, it was already late January, and
it was getting a lot harder to turn back: lots of energy already put into
promoting the new brand, convincing publishers to update their links, etc.
“It's a trap!“

I just sincerely wanted to stay with the new brand, even if it was painful in
the short term, and I never really dreamed I’d be sitting here a year later
and still no recovery.

------
eXpl0it3r
Makes me wonder why they moved the domain/rebranded in the first place.
SaveYourself.ca feels a lot more catchy than PainScience.ca.

~~~
paulingraham
Opinions differ on that! It was thoroughly hashed out and tested.
“SaveYourself” had over-promising and vague religious connotations that made
many people uncomfortable (me included). PainScience.com was more appealing to
the right audience. More about the rationale here:
[https://www.painscience.com/about-moving-to-
painscience.php](https://www.painscience.com/about-moving-to-painscience.php)

------
fjbarrett
Good experience to learn from, thanks for sharing

