After I purchased a custom domain, my stats started dropping. What happened?
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After several months operating as girlandapron.wordpress.com, I purchased (through WordPress) the custom domain of girlandapron.com. The site works perfectly, with all links redirecting. However, my stats started dropping immediately. (Specifically, I lost the many hits a day I was getting from foodgawker and TasteSpotting submissions that used my girlandapron.wordpress.com address.) I thought WordPress was using a 302 (temporary) redirect instead of a 301 (permanent), but the WordPress blog (http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/making-redirects-permanent/) says it automatically uses 301 for custom domains now. Any idea what happened? Can I fix it, and (if so) how?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
We do indeed use a 301 redirect when a new domain is added to your site. In situations such as these the issue frequently ends up being that the referring site (in this case foodgawker and TasteSpotting) sees your site as being two different ones because of the different names. Facebook, for example, does this as well; if you add or change a domain then all likes are removed and you have to rebuild them over time. There is no way to re-add them.
While this behavior doesn’t match what is happening exactly, it seems to be similar. Since the URL has changed, they may see this site as “new” and so not as trusted as your previous one.
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Thanks for your response. That’s pretty much what I suspected. Luckily my blog is relatively new, so losing a few dozens hits a days is not as devastating as losing thousands. :)
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Things could indeed be worse! I’m glad to hear that you take that view. If you run in to any other questions, please let me know! I’ll be happy to help. :)
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