Google On Requirement of Security Certificate While Merging Sites

Posted On : March 6th, 2020   By : Diptimayee Mohanty   To : Technical SEO

Switching from an old domain to a new domain is a hefty task. And, one of the most important questions that arise while switching to a new domain is whether to keep the security certificate for the old domain or not. In various forums, we can see webmasters asking about this.

So, what to do? Do we need to keep the security certificate for the old domain? If yes, then for how long?

Let’s know it from Google expert, John Mueller.

On Twitter, John was asked to share his advice on the need of SSL certificate continuation for an old domain while merging that old domain to a new domain.

In its reply, John said that if you remove the security certificate of your old domain then search engines can deal with it but, browsers definitely need the certificate for HTTPs. It means when the security certificate is removed from the old domain, the browsers may throw an error to users on the redirect.

That’s why John advised webmasters to keep the security certificate live and also informed that they can get certificates for free now-a-days.

Browsers definitely need the certificate for HTTPS, even if you're just redirecting. Search engines can probably deal with it, but if there's a chance the old URL is shown to users, just keep the certificate live too. You can get certificates for free nowadays.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) March 4, 2020

But, is there any particular time period for which webmasters need to keep the security certificate live on the old domain or should they keep it live indefinitely?

On this, John said that Google usually recrawl URLs at least every half year and it’s better to have a minimum of two crawls. So, it’s a good idea to keep the certificate live on the old domain for at least more than a year.

We usually recrawl URLs at latest every half year, so a year gives you min 2 rounds, which is a good starting point. Even without certificate, I'd try to keep the domain name for the long run to prevent spammers from picking it up.

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) March 4, 2020