Over the last few days there has been a lot of intrigue over a recent addition to Google’s robots.txt file, the new URL they added was to the new version of Google Webmaster Tools which has finally be rolled out to all users.
Google have completely overhauled the user interface and have added a great new feature… Change of Address!
Without a doubt this is the most important change they have made, and should make everyone’s site migrations much smoother. What this means is that you can now notify Google when you are moving from one domain to another. This will enable Google to update their index faster and hopefully create a much smoother transition for your site migration. This is a fantastic feature for large sites when moving domains, hopefully no longer will we have to wait weeks for the site to be fully indexed. We’re really looking forward to seeing this trialled, well done Google.
Some other subtleties apart from the general appearance are that finally the listings have now set to default to 100! and Google have worked on improving the back end code which is now far more accurate and reliable.
But to all this excitement there is a downfall if you are manage a lot of domains. The new site switcher lists only five sites,which you will find very limiting. Google have stated that they will be addressing this in a future release.
Also Google have changed how they decide to show “Links to your site”. The new interface won’t show redirected links. Bear this in mind if you realise that you’ve now lost a lot of links.
On a similar account, Matt Cutts, when are you going to write about your experiment with migrating your site?
I’m the technology manager of a large media website, and we are about to actualy shift from being a sub-domain of a larger parent network to our own domain… the expected SEO bounce was set to cost us 1,000’s of dollars… good timing Google!
Hi MCVeee, thanks for commenting. I’ve provided consultancy on large site migration strategies, but haven’t had a chance to see the outcomes as yet for Google’s new tool. It would be great to have your feedback on how it all goes.
How are you benchmarking current performance to monitor the effects of the change?
Great blog! I Will subscribe to your feed. Im trying to bulk up but reading all i can in the meantime.