Sometimes it’s necessary to change your website’s URLs, URL directories, or even the domain. To mitigate the negative impact this may have on your SEO for Baidu, you can use the site revision function in Baidu Webmaster Tools.
We’ve put together an article on how to use the site revision tool to inform Baidu of your site/URL changes and ensure your SEO remains intact.
Note: To be able to use the site revision tool, all the domains that you are working with must be verified by Baidu Webmaster Tools. If you’re not yet verified, check out an earlier article we wrote discussing how to set up Baidu Webmaster Tools.
Step 2: Add Revision Rule
Select the old domain as the target website.
Click the blue button to add the revision rule. There are 3 methods to set revision rules.
Method 1: Domain Name Revisions
This method is used to replace the website’s domain name only when the new URLs will still exactly match the old ones apart from the domain name change. In other words, this method is to be used when only the domain name will change, but the rest of the URL will remain the same. If some other part of the new URL will be different from the old URL, you must use method 2 (described below).
Method 2: Site-Wide URL Folder Revisions
This method is used for updating URLs to different folder names, regardless of whether your domain name changes. Use regular expressions to set up the rules.
For example, if the old URL looks like:
http://www.domain.com/folder1/[pages]/
Then the matched new URL will look like:
http://www.domain.com/folder2/[pages]/.
Regular expressions for the old URLs: http://www.old-domain.com/folder1/(\w+)/
Regular expressions for the new URLs: http://www.new-domain.com/folder2/${1}/
Submit 3 URL pairs as examples.
Method 3: Individual URL Revisions
Sometimes, you might change only a few URLs without any pattern or consistency across the site. In this case, you can submit the individual URLs by uploading a file or pasting the URLs in the text box.
First, you need to select the old domain and the new domain. Second, select the way you wish to upload the URLs.
There are 2 ways to submit URLs:
- Upload the URLs in a.txt file
- 1 URL pair/line
- The format is old-URL[space]new-URL. For example:
http://www.old-domain.com/folder1/page1/ http://www.new-domain.com/folder2/page1/
http://www.old-domain.com/folder1/page2/ http://www.new-domain.com/folder2/page2/
http://www.old-domain.com/folder1/page3/ http://www.new-domain.com/folder2/page3/
Note: The file’s size cannot exceed 10MB with no more than 50,000 pairs in one file. You can submit up to 10 files at one time.
2. Fill the URLs in the text box
- 1 URL pair/line
- The format is old-URL[space]new-URL. For example:
http://www.old-domain.com/folder1/page1/ http://www.new-domain.com/folder2/page1/
http://www.old-domain.com/folder1/page2/ http://www.new-domain.com/folder2/page2/
http://www.old-domain.com/folder1/page3/ http://www.new-domain.com/folder2/page3/
Note: You can submit up to 2,000 pairs at one time.
After the URLs are uploaded/filled, click the blue button to submit the data.
Step 3: Baidu Validation
Baidu will take 0.5-2 hours to validate your revision rules. Baidu will take action on your rules in 12-48 hours after validation. This action can include switching the ranking from the old URLs to the new ones.
Step 4: Updating the URLs based on Baidu’s Recommendations
If the rule fails to validate, you need to click “检验失败 (failed to validate)” to find the reason and Baidu’s recommended remedies. Resubmit the rule after you update it according to Baidu’s recommendations.
Once the revision rule is set up successfully, Baidu will switch the resources to the new URLs (pages). This helps Baidu find updates to your new pages in a shorter time, which makes the new pages perform better on Baidu.
