Quick answer: why did my traffic drop after a website migration?
Usually because the signals Google built up for the old URLs did not transfer cleanly. The most common causes are missing or incorrect 301 redirects, pages that were merged or removed, changed internal links, new pages blocked by robots.txt or noindex, and content that got thinner in the redesign. Google says some fluctuation is normal while it recrawls a moved site, but a long, steep loss almost always has a fixable cause.
Why migrations lose traffic
To Google, a URL is an address with a history: links pointing at it, internal links, a record of which searches it satisfied. When the address changes, that history has to be forwarded. Google's site-move documentation describes the job: map every old URL to its new equivalent, use permanent server-side redirects, update internal links and sitemaps, and keep the redirects in place for a long time. Every shortcut taken during a busy launch shows up later in Search Console.
Redirect gaps
Old URLs return 404s, or everything redirects to the homepage. Google tends to treat mass homepage redirects like missing pages.
Chains and temporary redirects
Old URL to interim URL to new URL, or 302s left in place where a 301 was intended. Signals consolidate slowly or not at all.
Content that quietly got thinner
The designer cut long service pages down to a few lines and an image. The page looks better and now answers far less.
Staging settings that went live
A site-wide noindex, a robots.txt that blocks everything, or password protection left on part of the site after launch.
Lost internal links
New navigation drops links to pages that used to be prominent, so Google sees them as less important.
Changed rendering
Content that now only appears after JavaScript runs, or text moved into images and sliders.
Rescue triage: the order we work in
When a migration has already gone wrong, speed matters, because the longer old URLs return errors, the more value is lost. Our rescue starts with the checks that recover the most, fastest.
Rebuild the old URL list
From Search Console history, analytics landing pages, backlink data, old sitemaps and archived copies. You cannot redirect what you do not know existed.
Test every old URL
Crawl the full list and record the status code and final destination for each one, flagging 404s, chains, loops and homepage dumps.
Fix the high-value redirects first
Prioritize the old pages that earned the most clicks and links, mapping each to the closest new equivalent, not just the nearest category.
Check indexability and content parity
Robots.txt, noindex, canonicals, sitemaps and rendering, then a side-by-side of old and new versions of key pages.
Where a key page lost substance, we restore it: the questions it answered, the detail it carried, the internal links that pointed to it. For a domain change, we also confirm the Change of Address tool was used in Search Console and that both properties are verified.
Keep the old domain. If you moved domains, do not let the old one expire. Google's guidance is to keep redirects in place for a long time, generally at least a year, and an expired domain takes every redirect with it.
Planning a migration instead? Get it reviewed first
A review before launch costs a fraction of a rescue. For businesses about to redesign or switch platforms, we act as the SEO reviewer alongside your web developer or agency: we do not need to build the site, we make sure the move does not throw away what the old one earned.
- A complete old-to-new URL map, signed off before launch day.
- A content parity check on the pages that bring in leads.
- A pre-launch crawl of the staging site to catch noindex, blocked resources and broken links.
- A launch-day checklist and a post-launch monitoring plan for the first weeks.
Moving to a new platform does not have to cost rankings. When it does, the cause is almost always process, not the platform.
How long recovery takes
Google says a site move can cause temporary ranking fluctuations while pages are recrawled and reindexed, and that a medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to be processed, with larger sites taking longer. A rescue follows a similar curve once the redirects and content are fixed: the pages Google crawls often recover first. Signals from links that pointed at URLs which returned errors for months may take longer to consolidate, and some value from very old errors may not return.
We set a baseline on day one and track recovery against it page by page, so you can see what has come back and what still needs work.