new gtlds An Unbiased New gTLD Case Study is Coming

[clasione]

"NEW YORK – I’ll have an interesting new gTLD case study coming in the next few days to a week or so. It’s going to be great, because I think it’s going to work. I think the position of the website in Google is going to improve greatly by doing nothing else but changing the URL to a new keyword rich gTLD. If I’m wrong I will have wasted another $150 on gTLDs, but either way I will learn and so will you."

Not Sponsored, Supported or in Anyway Influenced by Any Registry....

 

[mr-x]

Can't wait. Would be nice to see the stats for the .com version of your keywords if you have it.

 

[atinc]

"NEW YORK – I’ll have an interesting new gTLD case study coming in the next few days to a week or so. It’s going to be great, because I think it’s going to work. I think the position of the website in Google is going to improve greatly by doing nothing else but changing the URL to a new keyword rich gTLD. If I’m wrong I will have wasted another $150 on gTLDs, but either way I will learn and so will you."

Not Sponsored, Supported or in Anyway Influenced by Any Registry....

That’s it. Nothing else will change. It took me all of 5 minuets to change the site. I simply downloaded the site, set up the new URL and hosting account, change the URL in all of the source code, uploaded the site, and implemented a 301 redirect from the old site to the new one.

If I am not mistaken 301 redirects might affect the search result on Google. Yet I am not an SEO guy...

If anyone here specialized on SEO please let me know if I am mistaken.

Hope you will really provide unbiased results, cause I just read this in your article:

Now if you follow my updates you will be aware that I am usually more of a bashing-type of domainer when it comes to new gTLDs because I feel they are confusing to average Internet users compounding onto other negatives I’ve found, so if this change does not help the website, you can rest assured that I am going to tell you just that; it did nothing to improve the sites positioning in search.

Thanks for your time and effort.

 

[mr-x]

Using a 301 redirect is normal.

 

[atinc]

Using a 301 redirect is normal.

It should affect the search result on Google, that's what I remember from an article I have read. Only redirect by masking should not affect the search results.

But still, as I mentioned Seo is not my job. I only try to educate myself by reading about SEO.

Are you a developer or Seo person?

 

[enlytend]

301 redirect will pass link equity from the old pages to the new, and potentially preserve rankings from the original site (for terms where supporting factors were unchanged,) But its the correct way to handle a domain change or a redesign.

 

[atinc]

391 redirect will pass link equity from the old pages to the new, and potentially preserve rankings from the original site (for terms where supporting factors were unchanged,) But its the correct way to handle a domain change or a redesign.

Thank you @enlytend for the insight. You typed 391 redirects, did you mean 301 redirects or there is another redirect type called 391?

 

[enlytend]

Typo. Corrected. 301 aka permanent redirect.

 

[enlytend]

@clasione

simply downloaded the site, set up the new URL and hosting account, change the URL in all of the source code,

Does “source code” include:

• Title tags
• Anchor text
• Visible text on a page
• ALT attributes

Or were those unchanged?
Because those would all be taken into account for ranking a page.

 

[clasione]

A 301 is basically how to best transfer a website according to Google. So, that is what I used, a 301 within htaccess. Google usually wants you to do a an address change within webmaster tools, but I am not going to do that. I'm just going to leave the site as is as it doesn't even have a webmaster tools account, so I want to leave minimum communication with Google about what I am doing. I've done this before as far as site moves plenty of times, but usually I will update a lot more and so the webmaster tools stuff and even update links to the site and all of that, but this time, I want to leave everything as is. The only source code changes I have made is change the navigational links to point to the new name, the correct address now.

 

[atinc]

A 301 is basically how to best transfer a website according to Google. So, that is what I used, a 301 within htaccess. Google usually wants you to do a an address change within webmaster tools, but I am not going to do that. I'm just going to leave the site as is as it doesn't even have a webmaster tools account, so I want to leave minimum communication with Google about what I am doing. I've done this before as far as site moves plenty of times, but usually I will update a lot more and so the webmaster tools stuff and even update links to the site and all of that, but this time, I want to leave everything as is. The only source code changes I have made is change the navigational links to point to the new name, the correct address now.

I am afraid you can't get accurate results unless you spend decent time on this project.

I just read a couple more articles about the 301 redirects' effect on SEO.

Some say that it will result in 15% loss of PageRank.

Just trying to help, if you sincerely want to receive accurate results...

review the source here

 

[mr-x]

@atinc maybe you should check clasione's job description.

 

[Ollie3000]

"NEW YORK – I’ll have an interesting new gTLD case study coming in the next few days to a week or so. It’s going to be great, because I think it’s going to work. I think the position of the website in Google is going to improve greatly by doing nothing else but changing the URL to a new keyword rich gTLD. If I’m wrong I will have wasted another $150 on gTLDs, but either way I will learn and so will you."

Not Sponsored, Supported or in Anyway Influenced by Any Registry....

Excited to see this report. I've got a nice ngtld portfolio and i've always thought the SEO point of view is the deal clincher on these. Some proof it's better to own something like crypto.world rather than cryptoworld.com will shake things up a bit in the domaining world.

 

[atinc]

@atinc maybe you should check clasione's job description.

I've checked. Here is what I found: ( no SEO mentioned )

John Colascione is CEO of Long Island Media Inc., publisher of the largest group of Long Island New York based websites and one print newspaper collectively reaching over a million people per month. He specializes in Website Monetization, authoredMastering Your Website: and is a key player in several Internet businesses through his holding company SEARCHEN®

I appreciate his work, just raising questions about the accuracy of this project.

5 minutes of work might not be enough to get realistic results...

You might want to check the link of the source I have shared above and @enlytend 's signature on the posts above...

 

[mr-x]

G hasn't had a problem deciphering keywords in a domain. But your correct, it would be a market mover if they are giving positive rank based on the .gtld.

 

[enlytend]

I am afraid you can't get accurate results unless you spend decent time on this project.

I just read a couple more articles about the 301 redirects' effect on SEO.

Some say that it will result in 15% loss of PageRank.

Just trying to help, if you sincerely want to receive accurate results...

review the source here

1) If you DON'T redirect, you'll lose 100% of your PageRank as none of your existing link equity will transfer to the new site.
2) That article was from 2016. In real life, there's generally just minor loss of link equity with a 301, if any. (Google even says 302's are OK and that they'll figure it out, but most of us don't trust that.)

"The only source code changes I have made is change the navigational links to point to the new name, the correct address now."
So just to the link target changed, not the link anchor text?

 

[clasione]

I’m not worried about pagerank or any seo factors I just want to see google bold the keywords in the domain and extension and see if and or how much the website moves in positioning. What makes it a perfect test is changing to nothing else at all

 

[atinc]

I’m not worried about pagerank or any seo factors I just want to see google bold the keywords in the domain and extension and see if and or how much the website moves in positioning. What makes it a perfect test is changing to nothing else at all

Oh okay, I misunderstood the aim of this project.

I thought you want to test the rank on Google for .com vs new gTLDs. To do that creating 2 brand new sites would be more effective.

But you want to see what happens if you change an existing .com website to a new gTLD. Got you.

Thank you for your time and effort! Looking forward to seeing the results.

1) If you DON'T redirect, you'll lose 100% of your PageRank as none of your existing link equity will transfer to the new site.
2) That article was from 2016. In real life, there's generally just minor loss of link equity with a 301, if any. (Google even says 302's are OK and that they'll figure it out, but most of us don't trust that.)

"The only source code changes I have made is change the navigational links to point to the new name, the correct address now."
So just to the link target changed, not the link anchor text?

Makes sense, thank you!

 

[bhartzer]

>> Some say that it will result in 15% loss of PageRank.
Nope, if you verify both sites and use the Google Change of address tool, you won't lose any PageRank.

 

[clasione]

Supposedly.... No one knows this for fact. Even if Google specifically tell you this. You still do not know this as fact. Same as the no-follow tag, which is not practical to discount completely in every scenario. It's not logical to do so when have a campaign pushing every site to use it.

 

[bhartzer]

Maybe I should have worded it this way (since the PR toolbar has been turned off) :

If you verify both sites and use the Google Change of address tool, you won't lose any rankings or traffic.

 

[clasione]

Yes, if this test doesn’t yield the results I’m looking for, unfortunately I will probably need to use that tool, but I should not have to. If gTLDs are as keyword friendly in search as laid out to be, moving to one should show clear results even without the webmaster tools process. It shouldn’t be required to facilitate this change. Remember that Google has its own webmaster PR issues to deal with hence the vanishing of Matt Cutts and implementation of new faces to handle the blow back. Think politics, liabilities...

 

[Name Trader]

@clasione - It's been over a week now. How close are you to completing this study?

 

[clasione]

My original expection was two weeks. I’m pretty sure it is going to be 30 days now. Also, it looks like, so far, it is going to take longer for Google. There is a very good chance I may need to use the webmaster tools panel for this to work on google because as of now the site vanished from google and that should not be the case. So far it looks as though this will be a success on bing and yahoo but not google and I think I will need to cave on not using the webmaster tools panel. I’d say 30 days for the initial stage of the test to be completed, which so far looks as though will be a success on bing and yahoo, and increase in rankings and a dramatic decline on google.

 

[bhartzer]

>>If gTLDs are as keyword friendly in search as laid out to be, moving to one should show clear results even without the webmaster tools process

I'm not sure what you're doing, but frankly I've moved hundreds of domains over the years with proper 301 Permanent Redirects in place and have not suffered any changes in rankings at Google.

In fact, even last month I moved from one .COM to another .COM, set up 301 redirects, and never lost traffic, never lost rankings.

Using Google's change of address tool isn't a requirement at all. But migrating properly is--it sounds as if you're doing it wrong.