4 ms·

The single worst business decision I ever made was migrating a site on a .net extension over to the .com once the company bought it without making damn sure not

The single worst business decision I ever made was migrating a site on a .net extension over to the .com once the company bought it without making damn sure not to lose rankings in Google. I had heard that permanent redirects preserved pagerank/googleness, but dropped from top 5 on some important terms to outside the front page. This single poor decision/poor execution cost me and the company tens of thousands of dollars, which is orders of magnitude higher than the additional credibility the .com would've brought. I suppose I had to learn that lesson sooner or later, so I'll go glass-half-full and be grateful that it was on tens of thousands early in life, instead of more later. But that was a pretty expensive lesson.

apollo 18y ago
I was also under the impression that permanent redirects preserve pagerank... how are you supposed to execute a domain change like this properly?
- Jasber 18y ago
  301 redirects are the suggested method for permanently redirecting pages for search engines. This will preserve pagerank, but not immediately. This means for a while (1 week-3 months), many of your pages will be dropped from their current rankings. They will be returned, eventually. But Google has to update their entire index before you'll start to see any improvements.
prakash 18y ago
can't you do a CNAME change? wouldn't that preserve google rankings?
arohner 18y ago
Naive question: Why is the immediate switchover necessary? Can't you run the same site on foo.net and foo.com, and turn on redirecting from .net to .com AFTER google updates its index?
twopoint718 18y ago
I also have a naive question, does a .com really have "additional credibility" over something else? Why? How about independent of what other websites are doing?
- snprbob86 18y ago
  I assume there is some credibility to it. More importantly, it is the default extension tried/searched by browsers when the user doesn't specify a TLD.
- froo 18y ago
  Its more due to the brand association people have with the .com domain. When you're telling friends about sites "I found this great site, its called facebook" - for those people not in the know, the natural thing people do is to use the .com extension. It's also why the .com domains command a higher premium on the domain name aftermarket.
lionhearted 18y ago
In response to people suggesting alternative ways of doing it - yeah, hindsight is 20/20. Used 301 permanent redirects on every page, and yet, still meltdown. As for .com's having more credibility - I reckon they have a bit more, plus you'll lose some traffic when they mistake the .net/.com. There's a few sites I visit that are .net's, and when I'm not on my own computer with browser history, sometimes I accidentally go to the .com. We paid around $1500 for the .com in... 2004 maybe? This made a ton of sense, because with our margins/gross/net, it would have made a ton of sense for a competitor to buy the .com - they'd have been paid back on it if they could've got it to top 5 in google for us. (To all the people who might say that we could then sue them, the answer is that you're 100% technically right, but that's ugly and you don't want to waste time/lawyer fees in court except as a last resort). Anyway, even if it increased our conversions or preserved lost traffic by a small amount, it would have been a good business move... ignoring the loss of search rankings, which wasn't planned on and hurt.

apollo 18y ago

I was also under the impression that permanent redirects preserve pagerank... how are you supposed to execute a domain change like this properly?

Jasber 18y ago
301 redirects are the suggested method for permanently redirecting pages for search engines. This will preserve pagerank, but not immediately. This means for a while (1 week-3 months), many of your pages will be dropped from their current rankings. They will be returned, eventually. But Google has to update their entire index before you'll start to see any improvements.

prakash 18y ago

can't you do a CNAME change? wouldn't that preserve google rankings?

arohner 18y ago

Naive question: Why is the immediate switchover necessary? Can't you run the same site on foo.net and foo.com, and turn on redirecting from .net to .com AFTER google updates its index?

twopoint718 18y ago

I also have a naive question, does a .com really have "additional credibility" over something else? Why? How about independent of what other websites are doing?

snprbob86 18y ago
I assume there is some credibility to it. More importantly, it is the default extension tried/searched by browsers when the user doesn't specify a TLD.
froo 18y ago
Its more due to the brand association people have with the .com domain. When you're telling friends about sites "I found this great site, its called facebook" - for those people not in the know, the natural thing people do is to use the .com extension. It's also why the .com domains command a higher premium on the domain name aftermarket.

lionhearted 18y ago

In response to people suggesting alternative ways of doing it - yeah, hindsight is 20/20. Used 301 permanent redirects on every page, and yet, still meltdown. As for .com's having more credibility - I reckon they have a bit more, plus you'll lose some traffic when they mistake the .net/.com. There's a few sites I visit that are .net's, and when I'm not on my own computer with browser history, sometimes I accidentally go to the .com. We paid around $1500 for the .com in... 2004 maybe? This made a ton of sense, because with our margins/gross/net, it would have made a ton of sense for a competitor to buy the .com - they'd have been paid back on it if they could've got it to top 5 in google for us. (To all the people who might say that we could then sue them, the answer is that you're 100% technically right, but that's ugly and you don't want to waste time/lawyer fees in court except as a last resort). Anyway, even if it increased our conversions or preserved lost traffic by a small amount, it would have been a good business move... ignoring the loss of search rankings, which wasn't planned on and hurt.