[hayksaakian]

Do you still control the old domain?

Don't rely on the "site move" tool to talk to the crawler.

You need to 301 redirect your pages from the old domain to the new domain.

I see this all the time with clients who skip some basics when changing domains.

I'm happy to talk you through this via HN comments

[throwaway25239]

The old site was hosted on Github Pages, so there isn't a way to do a server-side redirect AFAIK, but I replaced each page on the old site with a client-side redirect in the following format:

    <link rel="canonical" href="new page URL" />
    <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL=new page URL">

[DamnInteresting]

This might be helpful:

https://dev.to/steveblue/setup-a-redirect-on-github-pages-1o...

Also, these redirects won't help with your Google results until next time they crawl the site, so you may have to wait a few days.

[walshemj]

Meta refresh redirects just don't work I am sorry to say.

[franze]

Hypothesis: CoA (change of address) request expired, redirects dont get recognized or are not here any longer.

Did you use a custom domain for old version?

[hayksaakian]

When you say it was on github pages, do you mean it was on a github subdomain like example.github.io ?

[throwaway25239]

Yes.

[hayksaakian]

Were you (1) using example.github.io as a CNAME with another domain, or (2) were people going to example.github.io directly?

I'm still not 100% clear on how the previous domain was configured with github pages

if it's 1) then you should be able to set up redirects for the domain using something like cloudflare to serve the 301s to the old domain.

if it's 2) then there really aren't any more "simple" solutions that you can implement purely technically. You've already added the canonical reference and the meta refresh. You could also add an A tag link to "Download the software on our new website" in addition to the other measures. Users are already sent over via the meta refresh, but the link will encourage crawlers who skip that tag to find you as well.

If your goal is to show up when people search the name of the software (example: "iterm2"), then the solution is to register on every possible social media website you can find and link them to your new domain. In addition to that it's worth using an online PR service to distribute a press release with a link to your new site announcing the new domain.

If there's a more generic term (example: "mac terminal software") then you've got a longer road ahead of you with a regular SEO campaign.

[throwaway25239]

It's the second one.

Most of my previous traffic was from direct searches for the name of the software, so I think I'll try the social media approach - thanks!

[hayksaakian]

Sounds good, good luck. Assuming your name is relatively unique then this should be something that resolves within 4-6 weeks. If it takes longer you might need to do some high profile PR to get the name out there and linked to the right place.

[sova]

Maybe GitHub can help