Change of language

[Online_Supply]

Hi everyone,

We bought a domain which had content in German for over 8 years. So the rankings it had were in another search engine aswell.

So i've changed the language of the content + targetting in webmaster tools to Dutch.  (i've created unique content, in case your wondering)
Now we don't rank in the targetted search engine, nor in the search engine the website was previously ranked.

My question is how can we fix this so we are going to get indexed and ranked for the targetted search engine.

Thanks in advance.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Stefan,

what I don't understand is if your site, now in dutch and targeting Netherlands, is actually indexed but not ranking, or if it also not indexed at all.

[Online_Supply]

Hi Gianluca,

Thank you for your response!

It is ranking but in the German index. That could be because it is an old domain?

[gfiorelli1]

HI and sorry for the delay...

haven't you considered that that domain is still ranking in Google.de because of its old link profile?

In fact, it can be possible that links it earned in its past existence as a German website may be the cause of its still good rankings in .de.

On the contrary, the percentage of links from dutch sites may be too small to allow the site to rank properly in google.nl.

That's all I can tell you, without knowing the site name.

[Online_Supply]

Hi Gianluca,

Thanks for yet another answer.

I did consider it, however i taught it wouldn't influence the rankings.

Which leads me to a follow up question, if you dont mind? 
Should i disavow those old links to help rank for the correct Google.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer the question.

[gfiorelli1]

If the links where totally unrelated to the actual site, what I would probably do should be to check in webmaster help forum a direct answer from John Mueller (or, better, asking him directly on Google+).

In fact, once there was an option for "disavowing" the links a domain just bought had, but since almost one year the link to that option has disappeared from GWT.

The use of the disavow tool usually is for site that have been penalized.

[Online_Supply]

Hi Gianluca,

Thanks for your answer. And sorry for the delayed response.
I'll ask John Mueller for an answer.

Thanks again.