Google reaffirms stance on new gTLD search function

Google has responded to concerns from domain name owners by stating that its search engine does not discriminate between legacy strings and new generic top-level domains (gTLDs).

Chad Lancaster, product marketing manager for Google Domains, published a statement yesterday, December 10, assuring domain owners that the search ranking of their website will not be affected if they transfer from a .com or any other traditional string to a new gTLD.

He said that domain owners must inform Google of the transfer and follow four steps.

The steps are:

•          Assemble the new site
•          Prepare a URL map between the old gTLD to the new gTLD
•          Configure the server to redirect the old URLs
•          Watch the traffic on both URLs

Further information on the steps can be found on Google’s support page.

Lancaster added that such steps do not require domain owners to give up their previous URL.

“Your old domain name can easily work with your new one. Once you properly set up your new domain name, you can redirect your old domain name to point to your new one. This ensures you won’t lose any traffic from your customers if they use your old domain name instead of the new one,” he said.

The post echoes a previous report published by John Mueller, webmaster trends analyst at Google, in July.

He responded to the concern from stakeholders that the Google Search function favoured legacy TLDs.

Domain strings such as .com and .org “will require the same geo-targeting settings and configuration and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs,” he wrote.

For further reading on the issue, click here.