A Domain Pool is a saved set of domains, each with its own connection and credential settings, that Experiments and Site Builder draw on when they need to reach a live site.
| Term | Domain Pool |
|---|---|
| Category | APIs, Reliability and Publishing |
| Also known as | Publishing Domains |
| Where it appears | Experiments and Site Builder |
What it means in RankGear
Experiments and Site Builder each keep their own Domain Pool, so a domain you configure for one is not automatically visible to the other. Each entry stores the target domain plus the per-domain details needed to talk to it — the endpoint, authentication method, and any publishing path. When a run in Experiments or a build in Site Builder needs to fetch from or publish to a site, it looks up that site in its pool rather than asking you to re-enter connection settings every time.
How to interpret it
When a domain in the pool behaves unexpectedly, read the entry’s visible status, its diagnostics, the retry decision RankGear made, and the result of a credential test before you change anything. Those four signals separate two very different problems: a transient failure — a slow endpoint or a momentary network drop — which is worth retrying, from an invalid configuration — a wrong host, an expired token, a bad path — which will fail identically on every attempt until you fix the setting. Retrying an invalid configuration only wastes calls; re-testing credentials on a transient failure only delays a run that would have recovered on its own.
| Signal | Points to a transient failure | Points to invalid configuration |
|---|---|---|
| Status / diagnostics | Timeout, connection reset, intermittent | Auth rejected, host not found, 404 on path |
| Retry decision | One bounded longer retry attempted | Stopped early, no repeated attempts |
| Credential test | Passes on its own | Fails consistently |
Example
A Site Builder run publishes to three domains held in its pool. One page times out mid-request; RankGear gives it a single bounded longer retry and it completes on the second try. A second domain returns an authorization failure, so RankGear stops that target immediately rather than hammering it with repeated paid calls, and surfaces the credential test result so you can rotate the token. The third domain publishes cleanly the first time. All three outcomes are read straight from each entry’s status, no guesswork required.
Important considerations
- Domain Pools are namespaced per tool: a domain saved in Experiments is not shared with Site Builder, and vice versa, so configure each where you need it.
- Entries hold real credentials and remote publishing targets, so treat them as sensitive. Connection tests should be read-only wherever possible, and secrets stay redacted in status and diagnostics output.
- The status and diagnostics on an entry describe what RankGear observed while reaching that domain — they are operational signals about connectivity and configuration, not a measure of the site’s SEO quality or ranking.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.