Hacker News Reader

> We just completed the transition [301-ing from MelonCard.com to SafeShepherd.com] yesterday

Clearly, your definition of 'out of the blue' is not the same as mine... good luck figuring out if the problem was on your end or theirs (hitting the front page of HN usually helps).

Edit: clarified transition per comment below

View on HN

Yeah, this hardly got a mention, despite being the most obvious and influential factor. It's certainly not out of blue. Now, as to why Google failed to connect the dots for them, who knows.

Yup. It took us several months to get our page rank back. We did everything "by the book" too.

Also: did you request a change of address in Webmaster tools? You have to control both domains, and request a "Change of Address" from old to new.

I should clarify. We've been ranking for "Safe Shepherd" and SafeShepherd.com. A 301-redirect from MelonCard.com shouldn't bring DOWN our rank for "Safe Shepherd" on SafeShepherd.com. Unless I'm missing how the algorithm works..

If MelonCard was the primary source of "google juice" for SafeShepherd.com, then the change would certainly affect your rank.

301 redirects are supposed to transfer the link juice so that couldn't have been the issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com