6 ms·

Guess what? It shouldn't be so hard period and none of the things that the OP had to do that were mentioned should even need to be done at all. Google should of

by gist 11y ago

Guess what? It shouldn't be so hard period and none of the things that the OP had to do that were mentioned should even need to be done at all. Google should offer a way to make a changes like this similar to the way that you can change an account name or a username at other businesses. If they have to charge a fee for this, fine. If they want to put in conditions so it can't be abused or gamed, fine. But all of this dancing on eggshells in order to please a company that has (for these types of things) no accountability is over the top. I am surprised that nobody has done any kind of class action lawsuit against google for some of their arbitrary and difficult practices or tried to get lawmakers involved (as much as I hate both options sometimes you have to pull the trigger...) Edit: And you shouldn't need hours and days of test prep, anxiety or needing to hire SEO experts to pull it off either. Ridiculous.

an_ko 11y ago
Providing a paid service to help people retain a high search position is basically selling ads, which Google definitely does.
- graeme 11y ago
  This is very obviously a faulty analogy. Ads help you rank for specific pages with very high ROI per paid click. Transferring a domain is preserving rank for all pages including those with (comparatively) low value per user.
nailer 11y ago
Google webmaster tools are awful. They treat the regular domain and www as well as https / http as separate, so every website shows up as four sites.
- zippergz 11y ago
  That is 100% intentional. Those could all technically be served by different machines and controlled by different people. It's an abundance of caution in making sure that you can only change settings and view stats for things you've proven you have control over.
  - nailer 11y ago
    I've proven I have control over all of them. I could also happily tell Google they're the same if it can't work this out for itself.
  - mikeg8 11y ago
    As a user, I've always found it incredibly confusing, unclear, and frustrating.
- BrandonMarc 11y ago
  ... to say nothing of the duplicate content penalty for having the same content x4. Even if there's no penalty, there's no shortage of unproductive anxiety over it.
lsc 11y ago
when you change your name, you lose a lot of brand recognition, search engine or no. If ford decided to call themselves "Johnson" next week, next time you wanted to buy a truck, you'd have no idea who these Johnson people were, right? (I mean, barring some huge advertising campaign, or you being the sort of person who follows Ford in the news.) Yes, there are automated ways around that, if everyone depends on the same search engine for brand recognition, but... I guess I fail to see why the search engine would really care that much. Yes, yes, I know that as a brand owner you spend years trying to game a search engine for your brand, and that has huge value for you, the brand owner. However, supporting that activity doesn't make the search engine better for the users or for the advertisers, the two groups that a search engine cares about. a search engine has some interest in a user getting a result that isn't too far off from what they want, you know, so said user doesn't leave for another search engine. They have a conflicting (and much stronger) interest in the user getting a paid ad that is similar enough to what they want (and possibly better enough than the organic results) that they might click on it and not be unhappy, because that's how search engines make money. (there's a conflict because the user wants the best result possible, while the search engine wants the organic results to be bad enough that the paid results are relevant enough to warrant a click. Of course, but not so bad that the user goes to a different search engine.) A search engine has no interest in helping businesses preserve their "organic" search rating. Either enough other people talk enough about the business that the search engine thinks that the link is worth something, or they don't. If you have a good reputation, and then you change your name and nobody knows who you are, well, that sounds like a pretty bad idea, doesn't it? and while yes, it is a problem that the search engine could solve, there's no reason for them, really, to do so.
DanBC 11y ago
> I am surprised that nobody has done any kind of class action lawsuit against google for some of their arbitrary and difficult practices or tried to get lawmakers involved Watch out, or you end up with cookie laws (and Google's fucking ridiculous implementation of that) and right to be forgotten (which is based in sound principles of European right to privacy and control over your data, but ends up with a flawed sub-optimal ruling).

by gist 11y ago

an_ko 11y ago

Providing a paid service to help people retain a high search position is basically selling ads, which Google definitely does.

graeme 11y ago
This is very obviously a faulty analogy. Ads help you rank for specific pages with very high ROI per paid click. Transferring a domain is preserving rank for all pages including those with (comparatively) low value per user.

nailer 11y ago

Google webmaster tools are awful. They treat the regular domain and www as well as https / http as separate, so every website shows up as four sites.

zippergz 11y ago
That is 100% intentional. Those could all technically be served by different machines and controlled by different people. It's an abundance of caution in making sure that you can only change settings and view stats for things you've proven you have control over.
- nailer 11y ago
  I've proven I have control over all of them. I could also happily tell Google they're the same if it can't work this out for itself.
- mikeg8 11y ago
  As a user, I've always found it incredibly confusing, unclear, and frustrating.
BrandonMarc 11y ago
... to say nothing of the duplicate content penalty for having the same content x4. Even if there's no penalty, there's no shortage of unproductive anxiety over it.

lsc 11y ago

when you change your name, you lose a lot of brand recognition, search engine or no. If ford decided to call themselves "Johnson" next week, next time you wanted to buy a truck, you'd have no idea who these Johnson people were, right? (I mean, barring some huge advertising campaign, or you being the sort of person who follows Ford in the news.) Yes, there are automated ways around that, if everyone depends on the same search engine for brand recognition, but... I guess I fail to see why the search engine would really care that much. Yes, yes, I know that as a brand owner you spend years trying to game a search engine for your brand, and that has huge value for you, the brand owner. However, supporting that activity doesn't make the search engine better for the users or for the advertisers, the two groups that a search engine cares about. a search engine has some interest in a user getting a result that isn't too far off from what they want, you know, so said user doesn't leave for another search engine. They have a conflicting (and much stronger) interest in the user getting a paid ad that is similar enough to what they want (and possibly better enough than the organic results) that they might click on it and not be unhappy, because that's how search engines make money. (there's a conflict because the user wants the best result possible, while the search engine wants the organic results to be bad enough that the paid results are relevant enough to warrant a click. Of course, but not so bad that the user goes to a different search engine.) A search engine has no interest in helping businesses preserve their "organic" search rating. Either enough other people talk enough about the business that the search engine thinks that the link is worth something, or they don't. If you have a good reputation, and then you change your name and nobody knows who you are, well, that sounds like a pretty bad idea, doesn't it? and while yes, it is a problem that the search engine could solve, there's no reason for them, really, to do so.

DanBC 11y ago

> I am surprised that nobody has done any kind of class action lawsuit against google for some of their arbitrary and difficult practices or tried to get lawmakers involved Watch out, or you end up with cookie laws (and Google's fucking ridiculous implementation of that) and right to be forgotten (which is based in sound principles of European right to privacy and control over your data, but ends up with a flawed sub-optimal ruling).