Does Custom Domain upgrade maintain page rankings
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Hi, has anyone used a Custom Domain Upgrade? Can you help please?
I’m trying to understand if the page rankings I have built up whilst using a wordpress.com address will be carried through to the new address so that pages are as highly ranked but appear as e.g. .com rather than .wordpress.com
I don’t own another address at the moment so would be buying the registration and mapping. I can see that the mapping will redirect traffic and have seen a mention of Site Redirects for people moving off WordPress maintaining page rankings but not sure if this is also covered by the mapping part of the Custom Domain Upgrade.
Sorry if I’m being thick and have missed something that is in the support documents on Custom Domain Upgrades, which I have already read.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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The annually renewable custom design upgrade can be used only to change appearance and fonts and not functionality on free hosted WordPress.com blogs by CSS editing.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/#frequently-asked-questions
http://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/
That annually rewable upgrade applies only to the blog it is purchased for here at WordPress.com and it’s not transferable to any other site at all. -
Thanks for replying so quickly but your answer refers to Custom Design, I was asking about Custom Domain.
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I’m trying to understand if the page rankings I have built up whilst using a wordpress.com address will be carried through to the new address so that pages are as highly ranked but appear as e.g. .com rather than .wordpress.com
Please read > http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/#important-notes-before-upgrading
http://support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/register-domain/The main reasons we purchase domain mapping are to obscure the fact our blogs are being free hosted by WordPress.com, and the effect is that all the URLs from the .wordpress.com root blog when clicked seamlessly redirect to the same content in the post under the new domain URLs.
The pagerank and authority the blog earned was earned by the .wordpress.com URLs and belongs to them. It’s not transferable. so what that means is the domain starts from zero. In about 4 – 6 months time the content will all be re-indexed by search engines under the domain URLs and all things being equal the blog will probably have the same pagerank and authority it had prior to purchasing domain mapping. http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/register-domain/
Note: If you do not renew your domain mapping then all those domain URL’s are broken and the blog reverts back to the old .wordpress.com URLs. That means all those broken links are there for months until the search engines like Google index them again under the .wordpress.com URLs and clear their caches (3 – 6 months).
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@andberlin
I’m so sorry about that. :( I noticed and have posted the correct information on domain mapping for you above. -
Timethief, I don’t understand, the content that I have already has moved up the rankings in less than a month, why would it take so much time for the new domain to be ranked?
Does this mean that WP doesn’t use 301 redirects, which I only know about through googling redirects and page rankings? The suggestion is that these redirects will maintain the rankings.
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Google only clears their caches every 3 – 6 months. So the .wordpress.com URLs will be there in the SERPs for the time it takes them to re-index the content under the domain URLs but all the links that are clicked will redirect to the same content under the domain URLs. In the case of my blogs which had 600 -700 posts it took 3 months time. If you don’t have much indexed content then the re-indexing may happen more quickly but the caches will be cleared when Google decides to do that and we have no control over that timing.
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I moved my site 18 months ago – Google still digs up old links from the old site every few days. None of the links Google is digging up have been valid since I moved. I did move from a .ORG install that had a plain html site also – so the comparison is not exactly apples to apples – but Google does seem to hang onto things for a long time.
Yes I think the domain mapping now used 301 redirects so you should have an easier time than I did.
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A support docs search for 301 redirects here > http://en.support.wordpress.com/tag/301-redirect/
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Auxclass, thanks.
Timethief, thanks but I’ve looked at these already that’s why I specifically mentioned the Site Redirects in my original post. In the WP store the description refers to ‘leaving WP’, which I’m not looking to do.
The WP documentation doesn’t specifically mention the page rankings element.
Auxclass has suggested that 301s are now used but without being 100% sure I guess I’ll make my decision on whether to spend money on an upgrade assuming that this will have a downside when it comes to rankings.
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@andberlin
Here is the information on the blog linked to your username:
Web Page URL: http://andberlin.wordpress.com/
PageRank 0
Alexa Rank 11,321,568
Listed in DMOZ Yes
Backlinks from Google 0
Backlinks from Yahoo 0
Backlinks from MSN 0
Results from AltaVista 0
Results from All the Web 0
Page Rank: 0/10
Alexa Traffic Rank: 11,321,568 No regional data
Sites Linking In: 4 http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/andberlin.wordpress.com#
Quantcast > http://www.quantcast.com/andberlin.wordpress.comYour blog is indexed by Google (357 results).
Your blog is indexed by Bing (55 results).As you can see this is the perfect time to do this because you have nothing to lose. So why sweat about this?
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I haven’t got a clue what the stats you’ve presented here are. As you had so many posts to transfer over you’ve obviously been doing this a lot longer than me. I just know that I am starting to get some traffic from Google and when I Google the subjects I write about I can see my results moving so that they are on earlier pages in the results. Think back to when you had been blogging for a few months (less than one publicly) maybe you found more things to ‘sweat about’.
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If you think you might get a custom domain name then the sooner you get the name and map it the better. That starts you branding sooner.
Domain name registration and mapping literally only takes a fw minutes since your site is already on WordPress.COM so you don’t really “move” anything – the address is changed and a sign put at the old address that says you have a new address – the old address still works and your visitors are sent to your new address without you needing to do any more work other than remembering to renew the domain mapping and registration.
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I say gain: you have nothing to lose here. If you don’t want to purchase an upgarde that’ up to you but standing on the ground of “I’ll lose my blogs’ pagerank” makes no sense as:
1. At present your blog’s pagerank is 0/10
2. Google search will still send traffic to your blog while the reindexing is underway. As I explained above the effect is that all the URLs from the .wordpress.com root blog when clicked seamlessly redirect to the same content in the posts under the new domain URLs. -
I’m sure you’re trying to help but you’re not! I came here for an answer to a question, I didn’t get it. I didn’t come here to have my reasons questioned. Let’s leave it there!
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Certainly, and if you wish to then please feel frre to enter the first post you made to create this thread and mark it as “resolved”.
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The simple answer is: in most cases, there’s a drop in pagerank. In your specific case, if you do the switch now, there isn’t going to be. So do it ASAP.
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That’s what I said above: ie at present your blog’s pagerank is 0/10 – you have nothing to lose.
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