: Can Google's "Change of address" drop my forwarded domain from the Google Canada search results and restore my rankings? At the end of October 2016 I switched our hosting to managed WordPress
At the end of October 2016 I switched our hosting to managed WordPress from Linux hosting, which was under hosted under 'site.ca', but had 'site.com' as primary domain. There was never any content on .ca however I believe there was a ‘hard coded 301 re-direct from the .ca to the .com
I was recommended to put domain forwarding on the .ca domain as we still own it when we transitioned to the new managed wordpress hosting and I assumed it was of no harm considering it would just forward .ca to .com if anyone were to type in site.ca
However this is the issue I am having:
Search results in Canada started to show .ca instead of .com . The site forwards fine to the .com however I never wanted the .ca to show up in search results and am unsure as to why it has since there is no content on the .ca and never has been
We have dropped a few rankings for our main keywords in Google Canada because it showing .ca instead of .com
We used to have a larger Google Snippet/Site Links in Canada search results that took up a few lines and made us more prominent now we do not since it is showing results for site.ca
I was wondering if this is just a temporary effect while Google ‘sorts stuff out’ or if I could use Google Domain Change from site.ca to site.com as a solution. I am hesitant use the domain change or make any major changes as I do not want the .ca to drop off and not be replaced by the .com
Have you encountered anything like this or know of a solution? Would using the change domain tool work if I told Google that site.ca is now site.com even though I've never had content on the .ca ???
Would there be any harm in trying the Google Change of Domain method?
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Domain forwarding usually comes in one of three flavors:
301 permanent redirects
302 temporary redirects
Framed redirects
It sounds to me like your .ca domain used to be a 301 redirect but the new forwarding option you chose may be a 302 redirect. Google sometimes indexes redirecting URLs when they use a temporary redirect status. Change it back to a 301 and it should fall out of Google index.
You don't want to use change of domain because you never actually had content on that domain. In any case, you have to implement 301 permanent redirects before doing so.
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