Dear friends, please help us tell The Google where we are.

Well, we did it. In March, we shared that we were changing our name from Kango to UpTake. We weren’t happy about having to do this, but we stopped whining and got over it. But we were too busy with our public beta launch in May that we put off the actual redirect of the Kango site to UpTake until now. On Friday 8/23, we flipped the switch.

Now our Google and Yahoo! traffic is GONE!!!

Ok I’m being a bit overdramatic, its not all gone. But its well known that when you do something called a “301 permanent redirect” it takes a little time before you recover. Its as if you are lost to Google. The 301 redirect tells Google where to look, but it takes some time before Google eventually believes what you are telling it. Please find us Google, and please believe that our new domain is a good one! (ritual Google rain dance)

Case Study: eMomsatHome.com switches to Sparkplugging.com

I follow Wendy Piersall (@emom) on Twitter. As Founder of eMomsatHome.com, Wendy decided that she needed to rebrand her site to set it up for broader marketplace success. And she picked a great name, Sparkplugging. Her post entitled “What I wish I had known about Naming a Website and Changing a Domain Name” shares some insights into the process and Wendy also has a nice interview in ProBlogger about her rebranding.

Wendy also knew that there would be a loss of Google traffic:

I knew it was coming – and I really thought I prepared myself adequately. But within 6 days of changing our domain name, even though every single page was redirected accurately, we lost 90% of our traffic from the search engines. And although I won’t tell you just how much that was, suffice it to say that I didn’t sleep for a couple of weeks.

Sparkplugging dip in traffic

Now, we’re in the “When we’re not Sleeping Zone”

I can’t share our traffic graphs because we’re a venture backed company, etc. etc.   But we’re about 1 centimeter to the left of the “When I Didn’t Sleep” arrow on Wendy’s chart! So looks like we have some sleepless nights ahead. And I’m already pretty sleep deprived from the Olympics!

How you can help.

There is a way you can help. By telling Google you love us.

Google assesses the trust of a new domain based on the links that it receives. With a 301 permanent redirect, Google will eventually credit the links from Kango.com to UpTake, but that will take some time. Fresh, new legitimate links from relevant sites to the new domain may us get our mojo faster back with Google!

We’ve reorganized our content around different topics. With Hotels, Lodging, and general vacation ideas that includes:

With Attractions and things to do, that includes

If any of these topics are interesting and can be woven into a blog post, a blogroll, or some other link on your site, it will tell Google that you love us and that they should crawl us again!

I know we will be ok eventually, but with your link love and support, maybe we get Google moving a bit faster.

Thanks in advance and the love will be returned if you ever find yourself in this situation.