The Great Domain Name Experiment
September 10, 2004 | 
30 Comments
Summary: A quick lesson learned about trying to switch to a new domain name.
So when I moved to my new host I thought it’d be a good idea to try and move to a new domain as well. I secured dkeithrobinson.com and decided to make that my primary domain. While it was a good idea in principle, I’ve come to realize it was a bad idea in practice.
You see, the 7nights.com domain is the one that people have been linking to over the past few years. It’s the one that people get when getting my site in Google search results and it’s the one that many still associate with my site.
So in essence I was just diluting my domain awareness. Not any more. I’m going back to the 7nights.com domain as my primary domain. What does that mean to you? Nothing really. Both domains will work and my primary e-mail address will still carry the new domain name.
I just thought it an interesting lesson learned to share. The bottom line: if you’ve got an established domain name, even if it’s not ideal, you’re probably better off keeping it the way it is than trying to establish a new domain that “fits” better.
(ps — if you’ve linked to anything under my dkeithrobinson.com domain and want to change the link back, feel free to do so.)
Filed under: My Sites
Comments
1. Dave Marks said:
Ahh, that explains why you suddenly appeared to (from my news reader) write 15 articles instantly :)
Posted on September 10, 2004 09:18 AM | #
2. Keith said:
Dave – That’s strange, all the old URLS, including my feeds, were still there. Maybe I don’t fully understand how the readers get notified, but it would seem like they should have been. I just checked my bloglines (which had both) and they both show as updated, although “new”, so under that situation you shouldn’t have missed anything…or are you saying they just got reset to unread?
That would make sense because I just changed all the index templates.
Posted on September 10, 2004 09:27 AM | #
3. KevinN said:
I stuck with the 7nights.com domain, easier to type and remember. Working on different machines, with no bookmarks or browser history to help you, you get the point! ;)
Posted on September 10, 2004 09:56 AM | #
4. Mike D. said:
So what about switching domains did you find to be negative then? Since both domains worked and led to the same place, I’d think the transition would be painless. I’d also think it would take several months to get people in the habit of going to the new domain.
As long as your e-mail address stays at the new domain though, I suppose that accomplishes the most important aspect of the switch… getting rid of spam.
Posted on September 10, 2004 10:10 AM | #
5. David Woodward said:
In NetNewsWire Lite all of your posts from “Dealing With Creative Conflict Within A Team” to the present post showed up as new and unread. Also, you changed your domain? I must have missed that post, and that probably makes me one of many partially responsible for your “move” back to this domain.
I also have two domains for my site, the full one in my link, and also 1-3-7.com because it is much easier to say that verbally to somone. And at the going rate of domains now days, it hardly costs anything at all for an additional domain. (Note, www.137.com is NOT affiliated with my personal website in anyway).
Posted on September 10, 2004 10:11 AM | #
6. Keith said:
Mike – My page rank for new posts went WAY, WAY down for one thing. I couldn’t continue any momentum with my new domain. Does that make sense?
When I make a post under the 7nights.com domain it’ll show up higher and be ranked higher than if I make one under dkeithrobinson. Also, my directory listing is under 7nights.com.
The 7nights.com domain is “established” with dkeithrobinson.com I had to start all over and I was realizing that many people were still linking to it and it would be too much to ask them to change.
In essence, all the work I’d done to establish that domain would need to be done over again. Sure it’d be easier than before, but I had years of good posts that people are still finding that I couldn’t leverage.
At the same time, new posts were “diluting” my page rank on old posts, albeit slowly.
That is the main, but really important, negative.
Posted on September 10, 2004 10:37 AM | #
7. Scott said:
Not in my case, I had the domain shadowlink89.com for a while and it got barely any hits, my new site recieves alot more simply for the name.
Posted on September 10, 2004 11:18 AM | #
8. Dan said:
So, what did you decide was the better name in principal? Why did you want your name as a .com rather than a clever catch phrase?
I wonder this because I went through a similar delima with my danbowling.com domain name.
Posted on September 10, 2004 11:21 AM | #
9. Keith said:
Scott – Sure, this wouldn’t have been an issue at all had 7nights.com not already been establsihed.
Dan – I decided dkeithrobinson.com was better as it had meaning. 7nights.com doesn’t really (not any more) and I figured dkeithrobinson.com could last me…well, forever. ;)
Posted on September 10, 2004 11:28 AM | #
10. Mike D. said:
I can say this to Keith because we are friends, but “Quit being such a Google whore, man!”
Part of the genius of Google is that it is not susceptible to instant artificial popularity spikes, and hence, it takes time to work up a good ranking. You are right in that, of course, your old site has worked up a great reputation/rank throughout the years, and it’s by design that your new site can’t equal those numbers quite yet.
It’s kind of like if you had a popular neighborhood coffee shop which had been established as a local haunt for several years, and you decided to change the name of it from “The Brown Bean” to “The Bada Bean”. The second name is better and will do you more good in the long term, but in the very short term, you may take a slight popularity hit in that word-of-mouth advertising about your coffee shop still uses the old nomenclature. Your old customers will still show up in droves because the front door hasn’t moved (automatic redirect takes care of that), and the word-of-mouth thing will take care of itself within several months.
Posted on September 10, 2004 11:33 AM | #
11. Keith said:
Mike – You underestimate the value I place on my google hits as well as the effect it’s had on page rank for my posts. I think it would take much longer than several months to get the new domain back to where it’s at and to me getting relevant hits from google is important.
I understand your metaphor, but I don’t really think it’s applicable in this case. To some it’s almost like I’ve disappeared completely and as far as Google is concerned all the time and effort I spent trying to make my site search engine friendly has disappeared into thin air. I don’t want to do it all over again. I’d rather build on what I already have.
Looking at the goals of this site, it’s important to maintain that relevancy. More important that a new domain name that no-one uses anyway… ;)
Posted on September 10, 2004 11:41 AM | #
12. Adrian said:
If I were you I’d go with the new url and modify the redirect page at 7nights. I think that for the most part, your visitors are smart enough to figure it out. In the long term I think it would work out to be a positive move.
My wife had a personal site that is now used for business. She registered a new domain and just moved with no redirect, just a little link. If her friends and family found her stuff with no problems, your readers should hardly notice a thing.
Posted on September 10, 2004 11:48 AM | #
13. Keith said:
Adrian – Nah, I don’t really want a redirect. I’d rather just keep them “mirrored” or do away with dkeithrobinson.com all together.
7nights.com was the domain that established this site. It’s unfortunate but true and the switch has caused adverse effects. I don’t want to lose the new one, but I’m telling y’all, once you have an established domain (with traffic and high page rank), you’re probably better off sticking with it.
If not, or these things don’t matter to you–then it’s fine to make a switch.
Posted on September 10, 2004 11:53 AM | #
14. Lars said:
I’ve always liked the name 7nights: it sounds good, and is easy to remember. But your links would look cleaner without the www. part of the URI.
Posted on September 10, 2004 12:06 PM | #
15. -b- said:
I’ve occasionally thought of switching my domain, but feared losing what recognition we have. thanks for the good tip. we’ll stay as is.
Posted on September 10, 2004 01:31 PM | #
16. Mike D. said:
Yeah, that’s true. I really place a lot less importance on Google rank. I view Google as an adaptive beast. It eventually finds out what’s important, regardless of where it is on the web.
If it were me, I’d do what Adrian suggested with the redirects. If you issue a 301, you notify all user agents and search engines that a page lives at a different place. Your regular readers will certain figure it out quick enough, and Google will follow shortly after that.
But whatever. Google whore. :)
Posted on September 10, 2004 01:44 PM | #
17. Keith said:
Mike – You smartass. :)
Are you saying my stuff isn’t important? I’m helping Google by providing relevant results. Have you tried to find anything with Google before? At least when you hit a site like mine you get what you searched for.
This is something I’ve always prided myself on. When people come here via google, it’s usually because they’re getting good, relevant, results. They’d still get that, only with the new domain they’d be much harder to find.
As to the redirects…In essence that is what I was doing. Every entry was being redirected to dkeithrobinson.com…Thing is Google doesn’t figure it out and it doesn’t matter because the links it’s spidering are pointing to 7nights.com. Trust me, I researched this pretty well before I made the decision to revert back.
What you say is true, but it would take quite a bit of time before I’d get back to where I was, let alone make any new progress.
In the end I’m taking something that is a relative non-issue to anyone but me, and getting rid of it in favor of my original page rank, etc.
Posted on September 10, 2004 01:57 PM | #
18. Adrian said:
You would only need the redirect for a short period, say a month or so. I would be interested to know what proportion of your visitors come through Google compared to those following links on blogrolls/entries. You already have a redirect of sorts for those just typing in 7nights.com.
When all is said and done, it is your site and you would be perfectly within your rights to change the domain to:
www.littlefluffybunnieswearingpurplehats.com (although that might not be a good idea)!
Whatever your decision, thanks for being here, or there or wherever!
Posted on September 10, 2004 02:16 PM | #
19. Mike D. said:
Yep, clearly your stuff is important. All I’m saying is that it is *people* who decide each page is important. Google does a little ranking of its own, but its decisions are based almost entirely on how many actual *people* link to one of your articles.
Your domain has only been switched over for a month or two now and some of your readers didn’t even know about the switch so all I’m suggesting is that you may not have given enough time for the links to build up.
The one thing missing in my logic is accounting for “overall site popularity” in Google’s ranking system. For instance:
Let’s say two different people wrote the exact same article and marked it up identically. Person A has an established popular site with tons of outgoing and incoming links from articles in the past. Person B’s site is only a couple of months old. With no incoming links for that particular article yet, what is the difference PankRank-wise? How many incoming links would it take before Person B’s rank eclipsed Person A’s? My guess is not many, but it’s only a guess.
Posted on September 10, 2004 02:36 PM | #
20. Keith said:
Mike – Oh, person A would have a way higher ranking.
To me it’s about findability, not popularity. I want people to find my stuff if they’re searching for it, not find me via another site who posted a link to my site. I noticed a significant dip in where my new pages were being ranked and a decent slip in where my old pages were being ranked. Sure it would have righted itself eventually, but I don’t really care that much about having a new domain. It was done on a whim…if it was important to me I’d wait it out.
It was very easy to switch back and I was still garnering new links to my old domain anyway, so obviously people weren’t catching on…
ANYway, it’s done and as far as most of y’all are concerned you won’t notice any difference.
Posted on September 10, 2004 02:47 PM | #
21. Thomas Baekdal said:
A tip: Instead of making both domains work with the same content. Stop adding new content to 7nights.com, but add a link to every single article to the new domain.
Like:
—
This article “[article headline]” will in the future be available on dkeithrobinson.com/[permalink]
—
and link “[article headline]” and “dkeithrobinson.com/[permalink]” to the article on your new domain.
And leave it like this for 3-6 months. Then after 6 months remove all content from 7nights, and change the domain to automatic redirects.
—
What this will do, is that you will keep your findability (nothing is missing), and your current page-ranking (nothing is changed). But, at the same time you are using your own page ranking (from 7nights.com) to help your new domain get up to speed (you are linking to it from your own highly ranked site). After 3-6 months your new site should be up and running very closely to your current page-rank.
This will actually boost your new domain much faster than by just having everyone else link to your new site. Google base their rank, not only by those who link to you, but based also on who links to the sites that links to you - and if these sites are highly ranked you will get “bonus” rank.
Calculation:
- 10 very good sites link to 7nights = 10 ranking points
- 6 very good sites link to your new domain = 6 ranking points (and you get lower findability and ranking - as you have found out)
- 10 very good sites link to 7nights, which then link to your new domain = 10+10 (one additional point for the extra high-rank link per linking site) = 20 ranking points.
Now, some may argue that this is manipulating Google, thus a very bad thing. But what you are actually doing is that you are helping Google to update it’s indexes faster - you are moving your content, and at the same time telling the search engines to index the new domain (by creating a link for a limited period of time).
Mike,
Keith is right in regard to your person a/b example. Pageranking is very much about your reputation in terms of links by others. Take a look at this Stanford University seminar where Google’s Krishna Bharat explains it in detail:
http://murl.microsoft.com/LectureDetails.asp?1018
Posted on September 10, 2004 03:25 PM | #
22. Keith said:
Thomas – Sounds like a good idea, only this is almost what I was doing before. The problem is that there is no way to automatically seperate the content between domains. I’d have to go back and ad that link to every article, or it would have to appear on all the new stuff as well.
I may not be understanding what you say, but 7nights.com and dkeithrobinson.com have to be mirrored or I suffer link rot. They are built off the same system, so if I add a link to the new domain to every old page, it has to show up on the new pages as well, which doesn’t make much sense. Keeping 7nights.com and letting dkeithrobinson.com become a mere 2 month blip on the radar is the easiest and most straightforward way to maintain my page rank, etc.
The new domain isn’t that important to me – really, it’s not.
What you say may work, but it’s not any better than just keeping 7nights.com. Not really, and it’s much more complicated than you make it sound.
Thanks for the tip though. ;)
Posted on September 10, 2004 03:41 PM | #
23. Mike D. said:
Well, it seems like the new domain isn’t really that important so all of this is academic at this point, but:
Thomas – I’m not saying that overall PageRank has no effect. Only that inbound links to a particular page are by far the leading factor in PageRank, so how many internal links would it take for person B’s page to eclipse person A’s page? I’m saying I think that number is not that high. I’m always very skeptical about people’s theories on page rank (including my own) because most of them are based on propaganda, misinformation, or hunches. For example, standards-evangelists have said forever that semantic markup is the key to search engine effectiveness, but I’ve always been skeptical about this. Finally some people actually tested that theory and somewhat debunked it.
Posted on September 10, 2004 03:58 PM | #
24. Thomas Baekdal said:
I can see how things would be extremely difficult if you are unable to seperate or manipulate the content displayed on you two domains independently.
I do not have that kind of problems (I run 4 sites at work, which share the same CMS and database - but they are still 100% independent from each other at the client side). For me, manipulating the content is easy. Even when specifying that only parts of the content should be visible on one of the sites or automatically add or edit content.
But, you are right. If your new domain is not that important - keeping 7nights.com as the primary domain would be better.
Posted on September 10, 2004 04:01 PM | #
25. Thomas Baekdal said:
Mike,
You might have a point there. You probably do not need that many links - the “Google bomb” hack is a good example (3-5 links and you are the highest ranking site).
But, if the sites (a & b) contains the exact same content - and you do not have control over how people link to them - site A would benefit from the higher rank (at least for a time).
Of course you are also correct that page-ranking theories need to be looked at with some skeptics (my theories too).
As far as semantics, then they are not the key to effective search engine placement. It helps a lot. If you have two identical sites - one of them marked up using semantics, the other using something else. Then the semantic site would be ranked higher. But it only takes a change of a single word, or a link from - say CNN to change that balance. Choosing the right words, in the right order and in the right context, is always better than any markup approach.
Basically: Write good informative articles, with meaningful and descriptive headlines and sub-headlines, and place that as close to the beginning of your code as possible. Then it does not matter if you start you code with a DIV or a TABLE.
Posted on September 10, 2004 04:24 PM | #
26. Keith said:
Mike – Having people link to you is the best way. The other tips help people see you in results, help your relevancy but don’t increase you page rank in any mesurable way. They help with indexing mostly. At least from what I can see.
Write good content, have something that people want to link to and you’ll get more hits from Google. That’s about it.
I know of a case when I took a site to semantic XHTML, CSS, proper titles and all that and it actually went down in rank. Pretty scary. I’m pretty sure there was something else to it, but…
SEO to me is: good content, relevant titles and incoming links.
Thomas: If I’d had done what you pointed out a few months ago it would have worked, but now I’ve got one server serving 2 domains and it’d be tricky. But thanks again for the tip.
Next time! Now that I know how to do it! ;)
Posted on September 10, 2004 04:35 PM | #
27. Neil Ford said:
I like the 7 nights domain. Feels comfy.
Now where are my pipe & slippers?
Posted on September 10, 2004 04:44 PM | #
28. Scrivs said:
I know it has been mentioned, but if you would have done a 301 redirect using .htaccess then the PR would have transferred relatively quickly (a month or two) and Google would have adjusted its links. Its pretty smart like that.
Posted on September 11, 2004 08:46 AM | #
29. David Hooper said:
Part of the beauty of the 7nights.com domain is that it will pop up at the top of alphabetical directories. I think that’s a great reason to keep it.
Have a site on the music business and that is exactly what we do. It has worked with great results for getting better placement on Yahoo, DMOZ, etc.
Posted on September 11, 2004 12:57 PM | #
30. BlndCat said:
Keith, I think you should have more faith. More faith in your content and more faith in the google algorithms.
Imagine if your domain (7nights.com) just vanished. *poof* and you had to use dkeithrobinson.com. On the strength of your content, and the way google (and the net) works, you would recover the findability factor (or page rank) quite quickly. After all they were responsible for the original findability factor being so high. If you trust in the ability of the net/google to adapt then it comes down to a short-term/long-term trade-off.
Having said that I’m not convinced that dkeithrobinson.com is a better domain. 7nights.com is easier to remember, to type, to tell people about.
Posted on September 14, 2004 08:10 PM | #
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