Learn · Development · Beginner
Learn to tell a normal, temporary dip after changing your URLs from a real fault, and work through the common mistakes Google lists when a moved site is not fully indexed.
By Dean Cruddace · 1 hour to do · Updated · Last reviewed
A site move, in Google's sense, means changing the web addresses (URLs) of existing pages. Its examples are going from http:// to https://, changing the domain name, or changing URL paths. A relaunch on a new design or platform often changes URLs too.
After a change like that, search traffic often dips for a while. This guide helps you decide whether you are seeing normal settling or a fault you can fix, using the checks Google documents.
Google says that if you change the URLs of existing pages you may see ranking fluctuations while it recrawls and reindexes the site, and that a medium-sized website can take a few weeks for Google to notice, with larger sites taking longer. If the drop is not recovering, it points to a list of common mistakes. See Google's traffic-drop guide.
Record the launch date and what changed: domain, URL paths, platform, layout. Google advises changing only one thing at a time in a move, so note separately anything that changed together. The same traffic-drop guide lists other causes such as seasonality and reporting glitches.
You will know it worked when You have a dated list of every change made at launch.
In the Performance report choose Last 16 months, then compare the last three months with the previous period. Below the chart open the Pages table and click Clicks Difference to sort by pages that lost most. Google says to work out whether the loss is the whole site, a group of pages, or one important page.
You will know it worked when You can say whether the loss is site-wide, grouped or a single page, and have the page list.
Type your site address plus /robots.txt into the browser and look for rules blocking crawling, which some owners use during development. Then use the URL Inspection tool on pages that seem missing from Google and check they carry no noindex. Google lists such blocks, if only needed for the migration, as the first common mistake. Having no robots.txt is fine if the server returns a proper 404 for it.
You will know it worked when No blocking rule or noindex remains on pages that should be in Google.
Open your most important old URLs in the browser. Each should reach its matching new page. Google says it frequently sees redirects to wrong, non-existent URLs, and suggests checking Search Console for an unusually high number of "Not found" errors. It recommends permanent redirects such as 301 or 308, and says not to send many old URLs to one irrelevant page like the home page, which may be treated as a soft 404. Content you removed on purpose should return 404 or 410.
You will know it worked when Each tested old URL lands on its matching, working new page.
Open the Page indexing report and look for a spike in errors around launch. Then open the Crawl Stats report: Host status shows whether Google met availability problems, and the Crawl responses table groups the responses it received. Google crawls a moved site more heavily than usual, so the server needs enough capacity.
You will know it worked when Host status is green and crawl responses are mostly successful, or you know which errors to chase.
Open your sitemap in the browser and confirm it lists the new URLs. View the source of a few new pages and search for canonical: Google says each new URL should have a self-referencing canonical. Hreflang annotations, if you use them, should use the new URLs. Click a few internal links to confirm they go to new addresses.
You will know it worked when The sitemap, canonicals and internal links all use the new addresses.
Google describes a normal move as temporary fluctuation while new URLs gradually replace old ones, over a few weeks or more for a medium site. A drop that is not recovering, or any fault above, means working the list. Google advises keeping redirects generally at least a year. It gives no day count after which a drop is a failure, and no guarantee of recovery.
You will know it worked when You have a list of faults fixed with dates, or a note that checks are clean and you will monitor again.
Go deeper
Describe what changed, on which date, and what the redirects and Page indexing report show. SEO QA covers releases checked before and after launch.
