Google Webmaster Tools - Change of Address

See below for screenshot and explanation of Change of Address.

Here are the Google webmaster tools categories as they look when you are logged in (left).
Below is the same structure with clickable links which go to a Hard Web webpage with a screenshot of what is on that webmaster tools category page (in my own webmaster tools account).

• Site Configuration
  • Sitemaps
  • Crawler access
  • Sitelinks
  • Change of address - YOU ARE HERE!
  • Settings
  • URL parameters
• Your site on the web
  • Search Queries
  • Links to your site
  • Keywords
  • Internal links
  • Subscriber stats
• +1 Metrics
  • Search impact
  • Activity
  • Audience
• Diagnostics
  • Malware
  • Crawl errors
  • Crawl stats
  • Fetch as Googlebot
  • HTML suggestions
• Labs
  • Custom Search
  • Instant Previews
  • Site performance
  • Video Sitemaps

Webmaster tools - Site Configuration - Change of Address

It looks brief and simple as outlined below inthe screenshot but this process can get very complicated.
You have to have all of your ducks lined up regarding the 301 redirects, the preferred domain you want to use, the canonical links, meta tags etc.
It is the "matching" or "mapping" the old site page structure to your new site while trying to keep your pages in the search engines whilst, usually, the HTML coding is drastically changing, that may very well induce nightmares in a hapless webmaster.
If you are changing a database site to a HTML site or vica versa the same sorts of tasks as outlined below have to be performed and this is when it gets interesting.

Help for the Site Configuration master category within Webmaster Tools (new window).
Help for the sub-category "Change of Address" (new window).
Also help on how to withdraw your change of address (new window).

Here is what a screenshot of the "Change of Address" category looks like within Webmaster tools (below).

Screenshots on this page are copyright © 2011 Google Inc.
If this page is not helping then you must go to the fount...Google Webmaster Tools Help (new window).
Also click to signup to get your own Webmaster tools account (new window).

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