Topix.net buys .com domain, worries about Google rankings

Kevin Delaney of The Wall Street Journal Online reports that Topix.net, the news search site owned by Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune, has bought its .com domain after paying a Canadian company $1 million.

About 50% of the visits to Topix come from search engines, and about 90% of that comes from Google. So, Topix plans to run its site at both Topix.net and Topix.com for awhile, in order to get over any unpredictabilities in Google and other search engine results.

You have to be careful when switching over domain names and it has to be done right. It can take some time to get it all working, but I have moved over a number of lawfirm websites from one domain name to another.