Domain mapping questions with regards to hosting

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  adarnasf · Member · Jul 30, 2011 at 4:18 pm

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  Hi all,

  I’m contemplating a blog rename and going down the route of domain purchase + domain mapping + but remain hosted on wordpress.com. My question is, in the future, if I keep the domain but transfer the blog to paid hosting, will the traffic stats, search engine index, page rank etc. stay the same or go back to zero? I’m just not clear which ones record the URL versus the domain name.

  By the way, I’ve spent some time google searching this question and reading through Time Thief’s website (awesome website, BTW), and I have an inkling of what the answer is, but I just want to be sure.

  My blog can be found at fridafantastic.wordpress.com.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  timethief · Member · Jul 30, 2011 at 4:48 pm

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  My question is, in the future, if I keep the domain but transfer the blog to paid hosting, will the traffic stats, search engine index, page rank etc. stay the same or go back to zero?

  The authority and pagerank earned by your blog is assigned to the URL for that blog. In your case that means it’s assigned to http://fridafantastic.wordpress.com/ When you purchase a domain name and domain mapping the authority and pagerank does not transfer. The new domain has to start from zero authority and pagerank. The content will be re-indexed by search engines and assigned to the new domain. In 4 to 6 months all remaining equal the new domain will probably be in the same position the sub-domain was in.

  The reason we purchase domain mapping is so when visitors click the original URLs to content which has already been indexed by search engines our visitors will be seamlessly transferred between the root blog sub-domain WordPress.com URLs to the new domain URLs. .

  If we do not purchase domain mapping then every link to our content under the indexed URLs in the WordPress.com sub-domain will be broken. Every time a visitor clicks an original URL to the root blog on the WordPress.com sub-domain they will experience a “404” (page not found).

  The foregoing is why I recommend that every blogger who is committed to blogging over the long term purchase a domain and domain mapping as soon as possible. When you own your domain and have domain mapping and later move content to a WordPress.org install at the search engine end of things all that changes is the web host.

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  adarnasf · Member · Jul 31, 2011 at 5:08 pm

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  Thanks again Time Thief! :)

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  timethief · Member · Jul 31, 2011 at 5:17 pm

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  You’re welcome and best wishes. :)