Google site move guide
Google site moves and migrations,
as documented
The steps, redirect rules and mistakes Google lists for moving a site to new URLs, in its own words. Verified from Google's page on 2026-10-07.
Google's site move guide covers changing the URLs of existing pages, such as HTTP to HTTPS, a new domain name, or new URL paths, while minimizing negative impact on Search results. This page lists what the guide says, with quotes taken from Google's page. If you are only changing hosting and not URLs, Google points to a separate guide.
What Google says about site moves
| Topic | What Google says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What counts as a move | “how to change the URLs of existing pages on your site while minimizing negative impact on your Google Search results.”Google's examples: HTTP to HTTPS, domain name changes or merging domains and hostnames, and URL path changes. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Move in smaller steps | “we recommend initially moving just a piece of the site to test any effects on traffic and search indexing.”Google: this applies if your site is large and it is technically possible. It also says one section is not necessarily representative of a whole site move. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| One change at a time | “Plan your changes to your site one after the other, not everything at the same time.”Google's example: move to a new domain, then change the layout, rather than changing domain, CMS and layout together. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Timing | “Time your move to coincide with lower traffic, if possible.”Google: fewer people are affected by potential issues, and more server resources can go to Googlebot. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Expect fluctuation | “for medium-sized websites, it can take a few weeks or more for Google to gradually start showing the new URLs instead of the old ones”Google: larger sites take even longer, and rankings may fluctuate while Google recrawls and reindexes. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Link credit | “301 and other permanent redirects don't cause a loss in PageRank.”Google's advice under "Don't worry about link credit". | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| When a move is complete | “To consider a site move complete, Googlebot will have to visit every URL on your old and new site at least once.”Google: there are no fixed crawl frequencies, and the move takes place on a per-URL basis. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Prepare robots.txt and noindex | “Set up a robots.txt for your new site and make sure the rules in the new site's robots.txt file correctly reflect the parts you want blocked from crawling.”Google: if you block crawling or use noindex rules during development, prepare what to change when the move starts. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Removed content | “make sure those URLs correctly return an HTTP 404 or 410 error response code on the new site.”Google: this applies if you are not moving all your old content to the new site. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Search Console variants | “Be sure to verify all variants of both the old and new sites.”Google's example: www.example.com and example.com, plus HTTPS and HTTP variants if you use HTTPS URLs. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Server capacity | “after a migration, Google will temporarily crawl your new site more heavily than usual.”Google: crawls of the old site are redirected to the new site on top of other crawling, so make sure the new site has enough capacity. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Find your old URLs | “In more complex site moves, you will need to generate a list of old URLs and map them to their new destinations.”Google: for a simple domain change you could use a wildcard server-side redirect instead. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Include embedded content | “These URLs need to be moved in the same way as all other content on your website.”Google refers to URLs of embedded content: videos, images, JavaScript and CSS files. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Canonicals on the new site | “Each new URL should have a self-referencing rel="canonical" <link> tag.”Google: if you use hreflang annotations, update them to the new URLs, and update internal links on the new site. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Redirect type | “We recommend server side permanent redirects from the old URLs to the new URLs as you indicated in your mapping.”Google: if no server-side setup is possible, you can fall back to client side redirects as a last resort. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Permanent redirect codes | “we recommend that you use HTTP permanent redirects if possible, such as 301 and 308.”Google: Googlebot supports several kinds of redirects. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Redirect chains | “we advise redirecting to the final destination directly.”Google: Googlebot can follow up to 10 hops, and if chains are unavoidable it says to keep them low, ideally no more than 3 and fewer than 5. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| All at once or in sections | “We recommend moving all URLs on your site simultaneously instead of moving one section at a time.”Google: this is for small or medium sites. Large sites can move one section at a time, which can make problems easier to monitor, detect and fix. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Irrelevant redirects | “Don't redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single URL destination, such as the home page of the new site.”Google: this can confuse users and might be treated as a soft 404 error, but consolidated content can redirect to its new single page. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Test the redirects | “You can use the URL Inspection Tool for testing individual URLs, or command line tools or scripts to test large numbers of URLs.”Step after checking rel="canonical" annotations and any noindex robots meta rules on the new site. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Change of Address | “You only need this tool when moving from one domain or subdomain to another”Google: it is not needed for HTTP to HTTPS moves, switching between www and non-www, or moving paths within the same domain. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Domain variants | “make sure to submit Change of Address requests for all verified variants of the old domain”Google: this includes subdomains and www/non-www versions, even if you are not actively using them. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| How long to keep redirects | “Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year.”Google: this lets it transfer all signals, and from users' perspective consider keeping redirects indefinitely while updating your own links. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| New sitemap | “Submit the new sitemap in Search Console.”Google: this helps it learn about the new URLs, and you can then remove the old sitemap. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Monitoring | “monitor how the user and crawler traffic changes on the new site and also the old site.”Google: ideally traffic on the old site goes down while the new site goes up. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Sitemap warnings | “this is normal and you can ignore these warnings: you are, in fact, moving to new URLs after all.”Google: Search Console may warn about URLs redirecting in the sitemap containing the old URLs. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Leftover blocks | “Don't forget to remove any noindex or robots.txt blocks that were only needed for the migration.”Google: a missing robots.txt is fine, but return a proper 404 status code if the file does not exist. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Incorrect redirects | “We frequently see people redirecting to the wrong (non-existent) URLs on the new site.”Google: check for an unusually high number of "Not found" errors in Search Console, or crawl your own site with other tools. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
| Sitemaps not updated | “Be sure that your sitemaps are all updated with the new URLs.”Listed among Google's common migration mistakes. | Google docs Verified 2026-10-07 |
How to apply it
A checklist that follows the order of Google's guide.
- Decide whether the guide applies: it covers changes to URLs, not hosting-only changes.
- Prepare the new site and test it, including robots.txt, noindex rules, 404 or 410 for removed content, and Search Console verification of every old and new variant.
- Build a URL mapping from old to new, including images, videos, JavaScript and CSS, and update canonicals, hreflang and internal links on the new site.
- Plan server-side permanent redirects (301 or 308) straight to the final destination, and choose all at once or in sections.
- Start the move, check canonicals and robots meta rules, test the redirects, and submit Change of Address if you changed domain or subdomain.
- Submit the new sitemap, update your own and external links, and monitor both sites in Search Console and your logs.
- Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year.
Questions
Do 301 redirects lose link credit in a site move?
Google says 301 and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank.
How long does a site move take?
Google says that as a general rule, for medium-sized websites it can take a few weeks or more for Google to gradually start showing the new URLs instead of the old ones, and larger sites take even longer. It depends on the number of URLs and your server speed.
How long should I keep the redirects?
Google says to keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year, and to consider keeping them indefinitely from the users' perspective.
Do I need Change of Address for HTTP to HTTPS?
No. Google says you only need that tool when moving from one domain or subdomain to another, and not for HTTP to HTTPS moves, switching between www and non-www, or moving paths within the same domain.
Should I redirect everything to the new home page?
Google says not to redirect many old URLs to one irrelevant single destination such as the home page, because it can confuse users and might be treated as a soft 404. Consolidated content can redirect to its new consolidated page.
Should I move my whole site at once?
For small or medium sites Google recommends moving all URLs simultaneously. For large sites it says you can move one section at a time, which makes problems easier to monitor, detect and fix.
Will Google crawl my site more during a move?
Google says that after a migration it will temporarily crawl the new site more heavily than usual, so make sure the new site has sufficient capacity.
How current is this page?
Every quote was read from Google's page on 2026-10-07, which showed "Last updated 2026-08-20 UTC". Google can change its documentation, so treat the linked page as the final word.
Sources
- How to move a site (Google Search Central), read on 2026-10-07
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