Migrated Domain, 90% Drop in Organic Traffic, HELP!!!!

[Kingalan1]

One week ago we migrated our old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com to https://www.metro-manhattan.com/.

Our organic search traffic from Google has dropped about 90%. Is this normal? If so, how long should it take to recover?

We filed a submitted a domain change request on Webmaster tools one week ago. We are noticing that many of the www.nyc-officespace-leader.com pages are still indexed which seems strange after a week.

To complicate things, we filed a disavow file on April 9th for spammy links that pointed the NYC site. We filed the identical disavow of those links to the new Metro domain to ensure low quality links don't point to the new domain.

Prior to making the domain change request, we migrated 30-40 non critical pages from NYC to Metro domains. Webmaster Tools indicated that the traffic was normal on the migrated pages. We then migrated remaining pages and filed the domain change request on April 4th. It is after April 4th that traffic and ranking declined.

I would like to mention that there was no change in content; identical content was migrated from Metro to NYC

This does not seem normal. Research prior to the migration indicated that if proper steps were taken it should proceed with limited disruption in traffic and ranking.

Any ideas on how to remedy this situation?

Thanks, Alan

[Andrew-SEO]

No this is not normal. Something is wrong.

Go into search console. Is your sitemap still running the old sitemap or has it been updated? Is the new domain fully crawled? If your site map is incorrect and 404ing this needs fixing.

Have you done comprehensive 301 redirects to the new domain? How many 404s do you have in search console? Have you used domain forwarding and resolved the urls at the new domain?

Also do you still have the search console with the old domain in it? Look at search analytics (in search traffic), what is your average position? compare to new domain - what is the average position for that. Have you had a big rankings drop? You must have, but this will show you the scale of the problem.

[Kingalan1]

Hi Andrew:

Thanks for your response. Yes, something went terribly wrong!! Response to your questions:

-Comprehensive redirects were done to the domain. Please see attached Search Console form for the permanent redirect. 
-The new domain is fully crawled.
-2 or 3 404s were detected. They are in the process of being fixed.
-As of April 10th, the average position of the old domain (NYC) was 28.2. As of April 10th average position of the new domain is 35.1.

Real problem is the drop in clicks. New domain only got 5 or 6 yesterday. Normally, in March we would receive 80-90 visitors. Average position of the old domain in March was 26.8.

-I have attached several images showing the problem. One, labelled "Inconsistencies" shows some strange results. Indexation for the old domain dropped for a few days after the permanent redirect (301) but then climbed again. Seems very abnormal.

Another anomally: entering "site: www.metro-manhattan.com" does not bring up the URL in search results.

Any ideas or suggestions???????????????????

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[Andrew-SEO]

Hello

Just to clarify this bit

"-Comprehensive redirects were done to the domain. Please see attached Search Console form for the permanent redirect. "

Is this the only redirect measure you have taken? (this is not sufficient)

You need to contact your domain name provider, online or on phone. Ask them to forward the old domain to the new domain.

If the new website structure is the same then all the URLs will connect up. Any that don't need redirects put in place done on the server of the new domain.

[Kingalan1]

Hi Andrew:

The redirects from all pages on the old URL redirect perfectly to the new domain. Any other ideas?

Thanks, Alan

[Andrew-SEO]

Is it basically the same site but with a different domain name?

i.e. all content / titles and meta descriptions the same?

[Kingalan1]

Exactly the same site.

Note that the only thing changes was the move to a new domain with an SSL certificate.

[Andrew-SEO]

Your average position used to be page 3. You're now averaging on page 4. This is part of the reason.

Have you lost a lot of referral traffic when you lost the backlinks.

Or is the traffic missing from organic?

Check analytics > acquisition > all traffic > channels

[Andrew-SEO]

Going HTTPS and a new domain name is quite a big change.

You will defiantly experience a drop in traffic but this should recover. But as you've changed domain names this could take 3 months.

A 90% drop is still big, but as your now averaging page 4 this is somewhat understandable.

[Andrew-SEO]

p.s. you've checked your google analytics installation?

[Kingalan1]

Hi Andrew:
I expected to take a hit, but I don't understand why the old domain remains indexed. Also, the extent of the drop in traffic. Is it abnormal that the old domain pages have not yet been removed 9 days after the move. Indexation for them dropped for a few days and then climbed. Is this a red flag for a fundamental problem?

[Andrew-SEO]

No this is ok. The old site will stay in the index for a few more weeks.

Can you identify if the missing traffic is all organic?