Making Redirects Permanent
On WordPress.com, you start with a standard WordPress.com domain name for your blog which looks something like this – example.wordpress.com. You then have the option of upgrading to a custom mapped domain such as example.com.
The good news is by setting example.com as your primary domain, all your visitors who try to access your old example.wordpress.com links automatically get redirected to the new domain.
But what about search engines and other services that access the old example.wordpress.com links ? Up until now, WordPress.com would send those services a 302 redirect which would tell them that a link had a new temporary home, and to go index that new link, but to not forget about the original one.
Today we have changed 302 redirects to 301 redirects. A 301 redirect tells search engines the new link has moved permanently, and they can discard the old links.
Why does this matter ? This change should help maintain traffic levels from search engines when changing or upgrading to custom domains, and makes things more flexible for you if you ever want to move from WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress.
As with anything search engine related, your mileage may vary, and the timing on when search engines such as Google, Bing, and others update their index is not something anyone can predict. We have a short support document explaining some of the complexities involved with search engines that is worth a read if you have any questions.
May 27th at 2:19 am
nice 301 redirects i had fears of taking out .wordpress but you have cleared my fears up
May 27th at 2:28 am
Raanan, you’ve made my day.
May 27th at 2:41 am
I was actually concerned about this when I thought of upgrading sometime in the future. This is good to hear, thanks!
May 27th at 2:43 am
Oh, that’s great! I was worried about switching to a domain as well. Self-hosted WordPress is just looking that much better now.
May 27th at 2:44 am
Nice, wordpress.com users are spoiled. Thank You
May 27th at 2:47 am
Wotcher WP Team!!!
Brilliant! This should help so much! I personally haven’t yet had the chance to upgrade my domain, but I’m seriously considering getting the upgrade.
Thank you so much!
Cheers,
Sarah
May 27th at 3:02 am
Hey,
This is AWESOME! Now, seriously, tell me folks, is there any point AT ALL to worry oneself silly over moving over to wordpress.org? I mean, all that we need is right here, right now!
Cheers!!!
May 27th at 3:11 am
Yay, this is good news. The Celtics losing is bad news but now I’m calling tonight a draw.
May 27th at 3:58 am
I was thinking about this idea the other day; it makes so much sense!
May 27th at 5:31 am
great news for custom domain mapped wordpress users …
May 27th at 6:01 am
This will make a lot of people I know very, very happy. Thank you WordPress.com!
May 27th at 6:05 am
practical and useful, thanks guys!
May 27th at 6:30 am
Haha, wow, literally the only reason I logged onto WordPress.com just now was to see if I could contact them and ask them about this exact issue (i.e., whether permalinks for my blog that use the wordpress.com URL will still work even after I’m using my own domain). Absolutely perfect timing.
May 27th at 7:23 am
thanks WordPress, once again you come through smelling like a rose!
May 27th at 7:47 am
it’s a good change as i am in a plan of upgrading my WordPress account. Cheers.
May 27th at 7:49 am
Thanks alot!
May 27th at 9:09 am
Like this one, it’s a very nice update and change.. this way, the search engines will link to our Blog either way, no matter what..
Thanks is a small word.
May 27th at 9:42 am
Yeah. Many a times while searching… I had raised eyebrows seeing the big link in the search results even though I had upgraded my blog. Thanks wordpress, you have resolved my ssue.
May 27th at 10:41 am
That’s terrific. My sites experienced a radical loss of traffic (never recovered) with my switching over to WordPress. Support was unhelpful with my query. Hopefully this will make a difference.
May 27th at 11:21 am
A huge THANK YOU! What a wonderful improvement. Blogging on WP is EASY & FUN! We LOVE YOU!
May 27th at 11:50 am
This is great news for those of use that upgraded to domain mapping! In all honesty, since I have such a small niche group, I did not see that significant of a drop in traffic when I upgraded. But, perhaps this will make it easier for others to find me.
May 27th at 12:24 pm
Thanks for this. It’s a better configuration.
Some kind of future proof, isn’t it? But who knows what will happen in future…
May 27th at 1:43 pm
a huge thank for this update
May 27th at 2:02 pm
Nice to know it’s there for the time when more than 2 or 3 people visit me in a day and it becomes worthwhile getting an upgrade.
May 27th at 2:33 pm
Another reason to favor WordPress – above all the rest!! Thanks for the upgrade in redirects!! Pat yourselves on the back, immediately!!
May 27th at 2:59 pm
Thank you for this information. But could you direct me, to the source, that has all the information for upgrading? Costs, options, instructions etc.
Thanks, I appreciate you folks, greatly. Elena
May 27th at 8:40 pm
Sure — for all the info re: custom domains, head over to http://en.support.wordpress.com/domain-mapping/
May 27th at 3:00 pm
Awesome! Thanks for that update. I think I will upgrade to a custom mapped domain really soon.
May 27th at 3:18 pm
You guys are the best!
I cannot sing your praises enough. Until now, as a somewhat tech challenged blogger, I didn’t quite grasp it that creating a permanent/domain name change via WordPress was that simple. You also answered my lingering concern about redirects.
Mega Thanks!
Eliz
May 27th at 4:38 pm
Ok, nice, thanks.
But.
As it is, the ONE thing I really want, i.e. full statistics, is not available. Why is wordpress.com censoring statistics, why????
Does it cost you that much more to send all the stats my way instead of that silly boil down?
Well I’ll pay for it.
If I can pay for more space, or for a chic name without the “wordpress” part, or for all the other useless extras, then let me pay for full stats.
Please.
May 27th at 4:48 pm
Could you expand on what you mean by …and makes things more flexible for you if you ever want to move from WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress.? How does it make things more flexible?
May 27th at 5:43 pm
Small change with a huge impact. Nice one guys
May 27th at 6:04 pm
YES! Thank you for this. I appreciate it times two (two domains being domain mapped).
May 27th at 6:55 pm
I just did this the other day and I love it! Domain mapping saved me the expense of hosting (for the time being anyway) and I love the fact my URL shows up in the address bar….not my url.wordpress.com. Best $10 I’ve spent since buying the domain itself!
May 27th at 9:18 pm
Good Job WordPress!!! That is the best idea yet because I was very worried about changing my URL in the future. You have so done it this time WordPress!!!
May 27th at 10:37 pm
great; i’ve been thinking how could I done it myself.
Since when is this on ?
May 28th at 1:40 am
It went live yesterday a few minutes before I published the post.
May 28th at 7:00 am
Excellent! Compelling for me to go on permanent domain.
May 28th at 6:26 pm
Thats GGGREEEAAAATTTT!
to hear all worries over domains, search engine placement and future traffic has been solved, thanks for explaining this us
May 29th at 7:04 am
Thanks a lot. I changed my domain a few month ago to a my url http://martinsoler.com, will google still take that into account on it’s next update? I mean is it also retroactive or only for those that change now?
May 29th at 8:03 am
It applies to all domain mapping redirects on WordPress.com – past, present, and future.
May 30th at 8:18 am
This is great! Thinking of buying a custom mapped domain as well..
May 30th at 5:05 pm
Thank you! I upgraded to a self-hosted site a couple months ago, so this will be great for redirecting traffic.
May 30th at 6:06 pm
I’m happy to hear about the 301 redirect implementation.
Randy
May 30th at 9:19 pm
So, PageRank doesn’t suffer?
May 31st at 6:58 pm
I was concerned about losing the traffic I built so I had moved yet to my new domain. I am confident about maintaining my traffic. Thanks.
Jun 1st at 7:37 pm
That’s a great upgrade feature, thanks!
Jun 1st at 11:11 pm
Thanks. Glad to know stats stay with the url but with the features you keep releasing I’m seeing less and less reason to shift to self-hosted. Cheers.
Jun 4th at 1:51 am
That’s good to know and makes it less hassle to move. Thanks.
Jun 4th at 5:51 pm
watta great movement, thanks…i’ve been upgrade to my own domains,
Jun 5th at 1:37 pm
Thanks. Glad to know stats stay with the URL but with the features you keep releasing I’m seeing less and less reason to shift to self-hosted. Cheers.