Site migration
A site migration is a change that moves a website's pages to new web addresses, such as a new domain, a switch from http to https, or renamed pages. Google's guide treats a change of hosting that keeps every address the same as a separate kind of move, and warns rankings can shift while Google recrawls the site.
Source: Google Search Central, Site moves with URL changes, checked October 29, 2026
What Site migration means for your business
Google's advice is to change one thing at a time. If you want a new domain, a new site builder and a new design, its guide says to do them one after the other, and to move during a slow stretch if your traffic has one. We'd split them up too, because when three changes land at once, nobody can tell which one caused a drop.
Some of the steps that get missed are left over from building the new site. Google warns that a site blocked from crawling or set to noindex during development needs those rules lifted at launch. Pages you aren't bringing over should return a 404 or 410 error. For a new domain, Google asks you to verify both sites in Search Console and file a Change of Address. For a new host, it says to check that the firewall doesn't turn Googlebot away, and we'd check the AI crawlers too.
Google says a medium-sized site can take a few weeks or more before the new addresses show in place of the old ones, and that submitting a sitemap can help it find them sooner. Our 301 redirect entry covers the redirect map itself. If a redesign, a new platform or a new domain is coming up, mapping your old pages to the new ones before launch is work we can take on.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview leaned on guides from Mailchimp and WordPress VIP, citing platform, SEO tool and agency pages and YouTube, with no Google page. ChatGPT cited nothing and warned of losing backlink authority, which Google's guide says permanent redirects don't cause.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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