Comment by rchaud | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rchaud | Hacker News Reader

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As someone in an SEO/digital marketing role, I find it hard to believe that a domain name change alone would have led to an 80% drop in traffic. As long as the logojoy.com pages were set up for a 301 redirect to the new domain (which they appears to be), there would be a small hit to SEO, but nowhere near 80%.

For example, a major Google Analytics/Tag Manager consultancy called Lunametrics was acquired by Bounteous in 2018. The GA-related articles originally written on lunametrics.com are still ranking towards the top of search results, even though they are now under the Bounteous.com domain.

What I did notice on the Looka site was that there was no mention at all that the site has rebranded. Not even a "Logojoy is now Looka!" type banner on the top of the homepage with an explanatory blog post. A lot of SEO traffic comes through content marketing, where somebody clicks on an article link that's relevant to their query. I wonder if they removed or archived any of the blog posts or articles that were bringing in traffic.

> Not even a "Logojoy is now Looka!" type banner on the top

There's a food product I buy for my kids weekly that changed their packaging about 6 months ago. It took me 6 weeks to find it after the packaging changed. I didn't look closely enough, I just thought they were out of stock. After I found it I realized that I knew this product by the package and not by the brand name.

There are a few similar products from different brands so the new packaging didn't jump out, I just ignored it as one I wasn't looking for. If they had simply included a "X is now Y" or "New Packaging" message across the top I likely would have found it sooner.

I recently noticed that instacart actually has both packages for this product in their product list, even though the old package is nowhere to be found in stores. Maybe this is accidental as the UPC may have changed, or maybe it's a brilliant solution to maintaining sales based on the old packaging.

My wife's company recently redesigned their logo and packaging and their sales slipped double digits. It's been 6 months and they haven't recovered yet. They're simultaneously trying to figure out where they went wrong in consumer testing and how they can improve from here (and it takes months for new packaging, new production, and flow through to shelf).

Reverting to the old packaging is an option but of course there was a reason they changed it to begin with so they want to take the pain now and get it right. I assume that's true for Looka too (they don't just do "logos" anymore so they don't want to go back to the name Logojoy).

Reminds me of the Tropicana orange juice rebrand fiasco from a few years back.

It was a case of very bad customer empathy. Basically, Tropicana orange juice comes in a few different varieties that vary based on the amount of pulp. Before the rebrand fiasco, (and currently,) there are very easy to identify visual cues about the level of pulpiness.

After the rebrand, the level of pulpiness was shrunk to very small text on the edge of the label. It was very hard to find. Furthermore, the text changed from well-known names, "Grovestand," "Homestyle," to "high pulp," "medium pulp." Often, due to angles of the shelf, the tiny text was covered.

I had to stare at the shelf, every time, for about 2 minutes just to figure out if "High pulp" or "Pulpy" was really "Grovestand." Now, for me, I only drink "Grovestand," so it was worth it. Most people just got confused and bought the other brand.

I was very happy, when after a few weeks of this nonsense, they brought back the old labels.

The thing is, the newer labels were prettier and more modern. All they needed to do was keep large badging for "Grovestand," "Homestlye," ect. That's it. Instead, whoever designed the label hid critical information in tiny text in a corner.

My guess is the keyword "logo" in their brand name was a big part of their SEO ranking

I switched over a website in a not competitive area to a new domain over the summer and search referrals dipped like 50% and recovered just this month. I'd imagine in something more competitive like logo/brand design they could get hit a lot worse.

It has "Logojoy is now Looka!". This is what Google shows when you type Logojoy:

"Logojoy is now Looka! Design a Logo, make a website, and create a Brand Identity you'll love with the power of Artificial Intelligence. 100% free to use."

Doesn't the google webmaster site have a migration tool to move a site to a different URL??

They do: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9370220?hl=en

You as the site owner would still need to set up the redirects and DNS changes, but the tool basically tells Google to emphasize indexing the new site over the old one.

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