How to transfer your domain to Google Domains

Overview

Google Domains is a simple and elegant service for registering and managing your domain name.

It’s particularly helpful if your email is also hosted with Google (see our help page about setting up Google Workspace here), as you’ll be able to access and manage your domain within your Google Admin Console, alongside your other Google Workspace management tools.

It’s a good idea to keep your domain registrar independent of your web hosting provider, so there’s no need to transfer your domain if you ever decide to switch to a new host.

Pricing

When transferring a domain to a new registrar, such as Google in this case, there’s usually a small fee to pay – typically around £10 for .CO.UK domains for example. However this is actually just a domain renewal fee – as part of the transfer, your domain ownership will be extended for an additional year.

For example, if your domain is due to expire in November 2019 and you decide to transfer it to Google Domains, your ownership of the domain will be extended to November 2020 as part of the process – this is what the transfer fee pays for.

Process

The steps to transfer your domain to a new registrar (such as Google in this case) vary slightly depending on the ending of your domain. Those ending in .CO.UK require you to change your “IPS tag”, whereas domains ending in e.g. .COM or .ORG require you to provide your “EPP code”, which is also commonly referred to as the “Auth code” or “Transfer code”.

The overall process is very similar however in all the above cases, and the instructions provided by Google are quite straightforward to follow. If you ever need a hand with any of it, feel free to ask us and we’ll be happy to help out!

1. Open the Google Domains website.

2. Click the link to transfer a domain you already own (circled below).

2. Make sure you’re logged into the correct Google account using the profile icon on the top right of the page (check our page on how to create a Google account if you don’t already have one).

3. Type in your domain (without https or www at the beginning).

4. Press Enter on your keyboard.

5. Follow the instructions provided on the page, which will vary depending on your domain as explained above.

For example, the instructions for a .CO.UK domain will look like this:

Continuing with this example of a .CO.UK domain as above, you’ll need to login to your existing domain registrar account and look for a place to change the registrar/IPS tag to GOOGLE. The exact place to find this varies a lot, depending on who your account is with – but it’s usually easy to find.

Then you’ll need to check the inbox of the email account that the domain is currently registered to, where you should receive an email from Google as shown below. Click the Confirm transfer button to verify that you want to transfer the domain. At this point you should arrive at step 6 in our guide below, with the authorisation code already completed for you automatically.

Whereas for a .COM or .ORG domain, the transfer instructions will typically look something like this:

You will then need to login to your existing domain registrar account and find the place to get your authorisation code. The exact place to find this varies a lot, depending on who your account is with – but it’s usually easy to find. Look for something that says e.g. “Transfer Out”, “Get EPP Code” or “Get Auth Code”.

6. Once you’ve got the code, paste it into the Enter authorization code field in the screenshot above, then click Continue.

7. At the next step to import your web settings, we recommend selecting the option to Keep my existing nameservers and don’t import any other settings. If we are already hosting your website for you, our erjjio nameservers should be displayed.

8. Click Continue again.

9. You can then choose whether to enable Privacy Protection (if available for your domain) and whether to automatically renew your domain every year – which is generally recommended.

10. Click the Proceed to checkout button.

11. You will then arrive on the checkout page when you will enter your contact and billing information.

12. Look for another email that should arrive in your inbox asking you to verify your email address, as shown below. You’ll also receive a separate email containing your purchase receipt.

13. Click the Verify email now button in the verification email.

14. Once this verification is complete, you should see your domain listed within your Google Domains account:

15. All done! If you have any questions or hit any unexpected issues with this process, feel free to get in touch with our team at support@erjjiostudios.com and we’ll be happy to help out.