Google’s John Mueller discussed splitting or merging sites in a recent Google Webmaster Hangout. During the chat, he outlined the difficulties and what web publishers an do to make sure ranking signals pass. Mueller even explained why merging websites won’t guarantee a merging of the traffic.
According to Mueller, moving a website from one domain to another is easy for Google to deal with. Moving a site from domains, sub-domains and moving several hundred thousand pages and images to a renamed folder can go smoothly. For many, it takes a few weeks for Google to sort it all out.
“Moving sites is generally a lot easier because we can pass all of the signals one to one,” said Mueller.
This remark is important, as it holds true with redircting old URLs to new URLs and even with canonicals. A common mistake is redirecting URLs to the home page. This can be a waste for your ranking signals as well as getting a poor user experience.
John Mueller recently affirmed how to pass 100% of PageRank with a 301 redirect and it involved a straight one to one matching of contact.
Mueller affermined taht a simple site movie is easier to debug. “It’s a lot easier for us to debug as well if something goes wrong. Someone can look at it and say… this is the old state and this is the new state and we can compare that.”