Redirecting previous URL to current URL

  • Unknown's avatar
    juls2456 · Member ·

    I recently let the purchased URL of my blog, emerging-communities.com, expire. Although I haven’t been active in years on this blog, I still get a fair amount of traffic via search engines. Unfortunately, now when a link to a page or post on my blog comes up in a search engine, it tries to access emerging-communities.wordpress.com (not a valid WordPress address) rather than the current correct address, emergingcommunities.wordpress.com (no hyphen). I don’t want to keep paying for the old URL but I also want people to continue to be able to access my blog easily. Is there anything I can do so that emerging-communites.wordpress.com redirects to emergingcommunities.wordpress.com?

    WP.com: Yes
    Correct account: Yes

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

  • kokkieh · Staff ·

    Hi there,

    Is there anything I can do so that emerging-communites.wordpress.com redirects to emergingcommunities.wordpress.com?

    Unfortunately not. It’s only possible to redirect a domain you own, and by letting the domain expire, you stopped owning it. In the coming weeks, the domain will pass through what’s known as the redemption process, and eventually it will be deleted at the registry and released so that anyone can buy it again, at which point the new owner will be able to point it to wherever they want it to go.

    So the current situation is unavoidable without retaining ownership of the domain, but the good news is it’s temporary. Over time (typically a few weeks), Google and other search engines will re-index your content at the free address, and the custom domain will be removed from their indexes and stop appearing in search results.

    If the site isn’t active this might take a bit longer – you could speed it up by starting to post new content to the site again – but it will happen eventually.

    If you had your site verified in Google Search Console, you can also use the address change tool there to notify Google of the site’s new address, which will speed up the re-indexing process. And if you didn’t have it verified previously, verifying it now should still have some effect.

    https://wordpress.com/en/support/site-verification-services/

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