Console: Change Of Address, 301 Redirects Step Not Working

[commcreative]

Hi everyone,

We just made a switch to a new domain based on a rebrand, and we are currently directing users who navigate to the homepage of the old site to an interim page on our new site that reads companyname.com/companyname, that then redirects to the actual homepage of the new site, companyname.com. The redirect page's purpose is to tell users about the brand name change before showing them the new site.

The challenge is that in the second step of the verification process for the address change, it reads that our domain name request does not correspond because the homepage is directing to this interim page. Is there a way for us to continue to direct people to companyname.com/companyname and have GSC verify that the 301 redirects work properly? Ideally we would not want to direct people from the homepage of the old site to the homepage of the new site.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Sincerely,

Chase

VHSpF

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Chase,

Not really because Google doesn't want people to hit holding pages before being redirected on again.

Personally, even if there were a way to do this, I would be looking for a more subtle solution or even promoting a blog post that explains the change?

-Andy

[slatronica]

Rather than creating an extra page to alert users on the brand change, why not use some kind of on page cue for the new home page to alert users. Common options are

• Top or bottom of page alert bars
• modal popup
• hero image or temporary homepage treatment

Use these cues to alert users of the change and invite them to manually browse your page with more detail about the transition.