Cached old pages sticking around for ever in the serps after a 301 redirect (google)

[secretagentdad]

So I've got an interesting problem I haven't run into before.

I redirected a domain to a new brand name several months back.

Bing / yahoo and co seem to have handled it fine and given my new site the rankings credit and even given me a few additional keyword rankings since the redirect.

For what ever reason, Google keeps insisting on storing some cached version of the old page and doesn't want to give the new brand any credit.

Probably unrelated but possibly related. I can't seem to get the new brand to show up in trends or auto complete.
We're getting x,xxx non botted searches for new brand and xx,xxx searches for the old brand.
Old brand includes a semi dirty word and periodically gets its results removed from auto complete. Interestingly it always comes back on random long tails or with slight common spelling mistakes so its either some sort of robotic or manual clean up targeting it.

Is it normal for redirects to stick around now?

Is it possible Google is giving entity ids to redirects and they're now considered valid results under some circumstances?

kinda stuck here. I need some blow hard theories.

 

[JamaicanMoose]

Did you use the Change of Address tool? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9370220

 

[secretagentdad]

Ok

Do that plan. Chill for a week. Watch.

 

[illmasterj]

I see this as the norm now.

I moved domain around 6 weeks ago. Same brand name to same brand name. All previous domain pages remain in the index, though few of them rank.

Earlier this year I was helping a friend with a messed up domain migration, that was 9 months after the initial move and involved a brand name change. Even then, 9 months later, around 30% of the old domain pages were still ranking well, in come cases outranking the new domain.

I'd heard about how entities/entity relationships were becoming more and more important and thought it was all crap but in the 9 month later domain migration, it seemed pretty real as the old brand had way more credibility than the new one.

 

[secretagentdad]

I see this as the norm now.

I moved domain around 6 weeks ago. Same brand name to same brand name. All previous domain pages remain in the index, though few of them rank.

Earlier this year I was helping a friend with a messed up domain migration, that was 9 months after the initial move and involved a brand name change. Even then, 9 months later, around 30% of the old domain pages were still ranking well, in come cases outranking the new domain.

I'd heard about how entities/entity relationships were becoming more and more important and thought it was all crap but in the 9 month later domain migration, it seemed pretty real as the old brand had way more credibility than the new one.

Did you do the change address tool with yours?


Entities have always been important.

I think the least over outed "nonsecret" in seo is that branded search volume from real searchers is some kind of lynchpin factor.
You can't fake it either from what I've seen. They have actually smart teams protecting that part of the system.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I read Mueller, within the past few months, make a comment about this. I don't remember the exact question or answer, but the point was that sometimes the old result will still be shown because it's what the user expects.

If they search for "Awesome Apples" and end up being served articles from "Zany Fruit" then they may think things are broken or get confused and bail on the search altogether. So it makes sense to show them the original brand, let them click, and then end up somewhere else. At least that way you get the click and Google satisfied a search, instead of confusing them at the top of the funnel.

 

[CCarter]

Funny you guys mention this - It can take over a year for pages to drop from my experience.

Example: I sunsetted the SERPWoo forum on July 31, 2016. A Google of "site:serpwoo.com/forum/" returned back 695 pages. Here is a breakdown of when I queried stuff and the results cause I wanted to write a blog post about it - but never got around to it:

Date	Indexed Results
7-31-2016	695​
8-1-2016	75​
8-2-2016	686​
8-5-2016	679​
8-7-2016	667​
8-11-2016	662​
8-15-2016	638​
8-18-2016	612​
8-23-2016	521​
9-1-2016	508​
9-9-2016	462​
9-23-2016	408​
9-28-2016	395​
10-2-2016	263​
10-16-2016	329​
10-26-2016	270​
11-25-2016	199​
12-13-2016	2​
1-20-2017	28​
3-30-2017	35​
6-5-2017	34​
6-27-2017	33​
9-17-2017	8​
11-25-2019	0​

--

The curious parts are the highlighted red results, since they represent an increase in the indexed pages for the old forum. Why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The question you might be asking is HOW I sunsetted it. I simply did a 301 redirect from big forum posts to blog posts or inner pages that were relevant then the rest of the forum went to the blog or home page. I didn't go into GSC (Google Search Console) and make update - in fact I've never used GSC on this domain and avoid all things Google.

I don't know if this will provide some insight into how Google works, but it may take a while for pages to "completely" drop from their databases even with 301 redirects, so perhaps GSC is indeed a better route. I would be interested in someone doing a similar observation but going the GSC route instead.

 

[secretagentdad]

Did you use the Change of Address tool? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9370220

So I went and did some reading and this section really jumped off the page at me.

"maintain the redirects for at least 180 days--longer if you still see any traffic to them from Google Search. Remove your old pages, but we recommend continuing to pay for the old domain for at least a year to prevent others from buying and using your abandoned domain for malicious purposes. After the 180 day period, Google does not recognize any relationship between the old and new sites, and treats the old site as an unrelated site, if still present and crawlable."

 

[illmasterj]

Did you do the change address tool with yours?

Yes. IMO it doesn't make much difference. Either the 301's are correct or they aren't. Maybe it teaches Google that you "own" both domains so reduces some sort of webspam filter but I doubt it.