Answer by Researcher Roger B (eiffel) on Thu 19 Nov 2009 - 3:58 pm UTC:

Hi xaevir,

Your Apache redirects (in the .htaccess file) look fine to me.

I located your previous site and checked the redirect using the Firefox
Live Headers extension[1]. Everything is working correctly. What you are
doing is what Google expects you to do when you move your site.

Google doesn't reveal the exact details about how they handle 301
redirects, but they do say this: "Ranking signals (such as PageRank or
incoming links) will be passed appropriately across 301 redirects"[2].

Google also has a page of advice about "Moving Your Site"[3]. It's written
as a helpful guide for webmasters, but it doesn't take much "reading
between the lines" to see that some things are likely to be important for
ranking purposes:

1. Avoid "404 File Not Found" errors at your old site. You've already done
this with the "whole domain 301 redirect" in your .htaccess file, but...

2. Google says "Don't do a single redirect directing all traffic from your
old site to your new home page ... a page-to-page redirect will help
preserve your site's ranking in Google". So keep the "whole domain 301
redirect" at the end of your redirects, but add specific-page redirects for
every individual page that has enough traffic for you to care about.

3. Search for inbound links to your old site. Whenever possible, ask the
webmasters to update their links to your new site. It can only be a good
thing for Google to see incoming links being changed from your old site to
your new site.

4. Keep your old site (with its redirects) up-and-running for as long as
you have any significant traffic to that site. Google mentions 180 days, to
give it time to re-crawl the pages that link in to your old site. Google
visits some sites daily, but it won't go so often to obscure pages on a
site that rarely changes.

5. Presumably the old page rank gets transferred across "bit by bit" as
Google re-crawls the pages that link in to your site. However, you can
speed this up by using Google Webmaster Tools to notify Google of the site
change. In this case, Google will "update our index to reflect your new
URL. Changes will stay in effect for 180 days, by which time we'll have
crawled and indexed the pages at your new URL"[4]. I take this to mean that
all of your old page rank will be transferred at once, then after 180 days
it will be replaced by the new page rank calculated by re-crawling all the
pages that link to your site.

If you haven't been using Google Webmaster Tools[5], you might find it
worthwhile to sign up. You will need to verify that the old and new sites
belong to you (by placing a file or snippet on the sites). Once you have
done that, you get a number of advantages in addition to being able to tell
Google about your site move (for example, you can see a chart showing how
the loading speed of your web pages has changed over time).

As for how long the whole process takes, Google says "up to 180 days". When
Philipp Lenssen changed the URL of his "Google Blogoscoped" website, he
tracked what happened. He didn't appear to lose any traffic. Although he
got a very rapid transfer of page rank from his old site, the new site
never quite equalled the old one. Immediately before the move it was Page
Rank 7. After the move it rose quickly to PR5, and it's now PR6. He
documented his findings four months after the domain move[6].

Philipp also points out that when you move your domain, you must do much
more than just redirect your webpages. He provides a useful checklist[7].

Xaever, I hope this provides the information you seek. If not, feel free to
request clarification.

Regards,
eiffel


References:

[1] Add-ons for Firefox - Live HTTP Headers
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3829

[2] FAQ: Crawling, linking and ranking (Google Webmaster Help)
http://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq--crawling--indexing---ranking
(search for the word "appropriately" to find the quote)

[3] Moving your site - Google Webmasters/Site owners Help
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83105

[4] Telling Google about your domain change
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83106

[5] Google Webmaster Tools
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

[6] Google Blogoscoped - How This Blog’s Move Went With Google
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-10-27-n88.html

[7] Google Blogoscoped - Telling Google Your Domain Moved
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-07-05-n47.html