Undo a 301 redirect

[SandraMoZ]

Hi there, 4 months ago I have done a redirect from one domain to another. Now, after about 120 days I have just a few results from the old domain indexed. The problem is that I believe that the old domain name had a really big impact on rankings, as it had the main keyword in the domain name. I'm wondering now if I could restore the old domain just by taking out the 301 instruction and how will search engines react. Do you have any studies on that? Would it be possible? Matt Cutts himself did it with his own domain, but he doesn't talk specifically on the effect of the rankings: http://www.thedotcomblog.com/seo/redirects-after-change-in-domain-name Thanks in advance for any help,

[zeepartner]

In general, it's not a good idea to migrate domains too much. I guess the fact that your new domain is not ranking so well might have more to do with the fact that it's new (i guess) and has less backlinks than the old domain (i assume).

Why did you change the domain in the first place?

Generally, I would chose the older domain with more backlinks. But if your new domain has not yet established some authority, it might in fact be a good call to change back to the old domain again.

[SandraMoZ]

Thanks Philip,

well, I changed it in first place for branding reasons, now that they seem to be not as important as before, and rankings have fallen from the sky,  I think it might work doing the redirection back to the old domain.

Pretty much all the links have been passed across to the new domain, so in case I would need to change them back. I see your point but I guess the old domain name (and authority) is really playing a big role here.

Have you got any experience on undoing 301 redirects? Should i just take the 301 instruction out or should I treat the domains as if they would be completely different, meaning that I would need to go to Webmaster tool, let google know of the change, re-claim the old domain, etc?

Thank you very much for any help on this!

[zeepartner]

Hi Sandra

I would:

• take away the old 301s

• establish a sitewide 301 redirect from your current to your "old" domain

• definitely use Webmaster Tools to indicate the domain change to Google. This really speeds things up.

However, don't expect your rankings to go back to normal again - it normally takes a few months to earn the old domain trust again. Also, make sure that the domain you're migrating back to is clean and safe (i.e. never used for spam and a clean link profile).

Hope this helps!