Moving Your .COM to a .BRAND Domain? Google Says…

Brands that have purchased their own .BRAND TLD (Top Level Domain) shouldn’t worry about moving their websites. I recently asked Gary Illyes, the Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, about the effect on search when you move your website from a .COM domain name to a domain on your own .BRAND TLD.

Hey @methode, how does G treat a site if moved from brand .com to www.home.brand ? (using 301) Do they lose value? Or same as http to https?

Gary was kind enough to respond, saying:

@bhartzer should be same. Make sure you use the site move tool though, that helps A LOT

As you should be aware, there are literally hundreds of new .BRAND TLDs that have been purchased and already delegated. They’re ready for the TLD owner to start using and migrating their websites over to their new TLD. Here is a sample of the .BRAND owners that have their TLDs delegated:

.AAA
.BBB
.acer
.aetna
.amazon
.amex
.amica
.aol
.bestbuy
.bentley
.bofa
.cartier
.ford
.chrysler

You can see the full list here:
http://icannwiki.com/New_gTLD_Brand_Applications

So, the real question is when the brands will start actually using their newly delegated TLDs. It’s my opinion that many of these brand owners are still waiting until another big brand moves. We already have Barclays Bank that is now using .Barclays TLD that they own. The only other issue is that there has been speculation on how the search engines will deal with a move from a .COM to a .BRAND, such as moving from www.company.com to www.home.company.

Gary from Google implies that you really just need to use the proper 301 Permanent Redirects, and use the Google site move tool. That way, you won’t lose any link value, or link juice when moving. And, hopefully, you won’t lose any search traffic. It’s really important to use the site move tool, since using that tool requires that you officially tell Google (through Google Search Console) that you’re moving from site A to site B.

So now, with Google’s response today, the brands really have no excuse NOT to move, right?!?