Website migration SEO checklist: redesign without losing rankings

Crawlers are programs that fetch websites automatically, such as Googlebot or the crawlers of AI companies. Each link takes you to the full step, with the reasons and a check for when it’s done.

Before launch

1. Identify the type of migration: Will your URLs, host or domain change? Plan major changes one after another.
2. Save your baseline data: Export your Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools reports, including the ones on AI answers.
3. URL inventory and redirect map: every old URL with its target or with a 404 or 410, images and PDFs included.
4. Test the new site: staging site protected, canonical tags and internal links on the new URLs, verification for Search Console and Bing carried over.

On launch day

5. Turn on the redirects and remove the temporary blocks from development. These are Disallow rules in robots.txt, the file with rules for crawlers, and noindex rules, which keep pages out of the index.
6. Check every row of the redirect map, for example with the script in this how-to.
7. Submit the new sitemap, the list of URLs for search engines, in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Submit changed URLs through IndexNow.
8. New domain only: file a change of address in Search Console.

After launch

9. In the first days: check the server logs, the Page indexing report and the Crawl Stats report for 404s and other errors.
10. AI crawlers and AI answers: check robots.txt and your host’s firewall.
11. Update internal links, profiles, listings and ads to the new URLs.
12. Compare before and after: clicks and impressions per page, for branded and non-branded queries.
13. Keep the redirects for at least a year, and keep paying for an old domain.

Why: Google covers site moves with URL changes (external site) and changing your hosting without URL changes (external site) in separate guides. A CDN is a network of servers that delivers your pages to visitors. No one can promise a redesign without any losses. Even if your URLs stay the same, rankings can fluctuate while Google recrawls and reindexes the changed site. Our guide to technical SEO explains the technical basics.

How to do it:

1. Write down what will change: design, copy, content management system (CMS), host, paths, domain.
2. Match your project to the rows of the table. If several rows apply, follow the steps for all of them.
3. Plan major changes one after another. Google’s example: move to the new domain first, then change the layout.

Common mistake: The domain, the CMS and the site structure all change on the same day. According to Google, combining a domain move with new content and a new URL structure will probably cost you some traffic, because Google might need to relearn and reassess the individual pages (Google on the Change of Address tool (external site)).

Done when you know which rows of the table apply to your project and you’ve put the major changes in order.

Why: Search Console keeps data for the last 16 months (external site), and its tables show at most 1,000 rows (external site). Since August 31, 2026, the generative AI performance report (external site) has been available to all websites. It shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Under Search Performance (external site), Bing Webmaster Tools shows up to six months of data, but only from the day you added your site. In Germany, Bing had a 19.74% desktop market share in October 2026. According to the Bing Webmaster Guidelines (external site), Microsoft Copilot relies on the same crawling, indexing and ranking foundation as Bing search.

Source: StatCounter (external site), Oct 31, 2026 · monthly figure, October 2026, desktop

How to do it:

1. Export the Performance report (external site) for the longest date range, once by page and once by query.
2. Separate queries with and without your brand name. The branded and non-branded queries filter (external site) isn’t available for sites with few impressions.
3. Export the generative AI performance report by page, and the top linked pages from the Links report (external site).
4. If you haven’t already, add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools now. Export Search Performance there, along with AI Performance (external site), the report on citations in AI answers.
5. Record which pages AI assistants cite today for your most important questions (measuring AI visibility) and how many visits they bring (tracking AI traffic).
6. Measure the load times of your most important pages, and note the tool, version and date. Field data from real visits is a 28-day rolling average (external site), so it only fully reflects the new site four weeks after launch. Our article on Core Web Vitals explains what the values mean. Our guide to measuring page speed shows how to measure so that your before and after values are comparable.

Common mistake: The site only gets added to Bing Webmaster Tools after the migration. Then the baseline is missing, because Bing shows no data from before you added the site.

Done when all exports are saved with their dates, and you know which pages have the most clicks, the most links and the most impressions in AI features.

Why: Google processes a site move URL by URL. The move is only complete once Googlebot has fetched every old and every new URL at least once. The status code is the number a server returns for every request, such as 200, 301 or 404. According to Google, you don’t need to worry about link credit: 301 and other permanent redirects don’t cause a loss in PageRank. A temporary 302 redirect, by contrast, keeps showing the old URL in search results (Google on redirects (external site)). Bing recommends 302 only for changes of less than two days, and a redirect rather than a canonical tag when content moves. If many old URLs redirect to an unrelated page such as the home page, Google may treat this as a soft 404 (external site). That’s an error page without an error code.

How to do it:

1. Collect your old URLs from several sources. Google lists sitemaps, server logs or analytics, the Links report and your CMS. Add the pages from your exports.
2. Include files with their own URLs, such as images, PDFs and videos. Google also counts JavaScript and CSS files.
3. Enter the target for each old URL. If you’ve merged several pages into one, all the old URLs point to the new page.
4. Leave the target empty if content is removed without a replacement. The old URL then returns 404 or 410.
5. Keep URLs where you can. Every URL that stays the same needs no redirect.
6. If only the domain changes, a single rule for all paths is often enough. According to Google, you may not need a list of individual URLs in that case.

Effort: The inventory, the map and the tests take time. Budget for them as a separate item. Our cost guide How much does a website cost in Germany? shows what providers charge for a redesign. To check whether a quote includes this item, use the grid in our guide to comparing website quotes.

Common mistake: Redirects from an earlier redesign stay in place and point to URLs that redirect again. That creates chains. Googlebot follows up to 10 redirects (external site) in a row. But Google advises redirecting straight to the final destination. If that isn’t possible, the chain should ideally have no more than three hops. So add your old redirects to the new map and point them straight to the new URL.

Done when every URL in the inventory has a target or a 404 or 410 decision, and none of the targets redirects again.

Why: Google recommends a testing environment, perhaps with IP-restricted access (external site). According to Google, you keep pages out of search with a password or noindex (external site). A robots.txt file won’t do the job. The canonical tag sits in the head of a page and tells search engines which URL is the authoritative one. On the new site, every page names itself as canonical, language versions point to the new URLs with hreflang, and internal links go straight to the new target.

How to do it:

1. Protect the staging site with a password or by allowing only specific IP addresses.
2. Run a crawler over the staging site that exports the title, description, H1 and canonical of every page as a table. Compare the values with those of the old site.
3. Check that your text is in the HTML the server delivers. Bing advises against generating important content in the browser with JavaScript. Our how-to on getting recommended by ChatGPT shows how to check this in the section Are your services visible in the HTML, without JavaScript?
4. Carry over the verification file or meta tag for Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. A Search Console Domain property (external site) covers all subdomains and protocols, including after a move to https. Bing expects its BingSiteAuth.xml file in the root directory of the site (external site).
5. Write down which Disallow rules and noindex rules are only there for development.
6. If you’re changing hosts, lower the TTL of your DNS records to a few hours at least a week in advance. The TTL (time to live) sets how long other servers cache the old records. Your firewall and denial-of-service protection must not lock out Googlebot. If your nameservers change too, our guide to moving a domain without email downtime shows how to keep email running.
7. Check with your host that the server can handle more requests. After a move with URL changes, Google temporarily crawls the site more heavily than usual.
8. If the new site adds services such as maps, videos or analytics, have someone check whether your privacy policy and consent settings need to change.

Common mistake: The Search Console verification file is missing from the new site. Google specifically reminds you to make sure verification keeps working after the move.

Done when the staging site is protected, the crawl finds no links to old URLs and no canonical pointing to a different URL, and your list of blocks to remove at launch is ready.

How to do it:

1. Pick a time with little traffic. Any problems then affect fewer people, and the server has more capacity left for Googlebot.
2. Turn on all the redirects at the same time. On a large site, you can move one section first and test the effects there.
3. If the site has to go offline briefly, show a notice page with status code 503 and a Retry-After header. Don’t keep it up for more than one or two days. If robots.txt also returns 503, Google says this blocks all crawling (external site).
4. Remove the temporary blocks from development. If you don’t need a robots.txt file, its URL must return 404.
5. Check the redirect map row by row, for example with the script in the “From our work” section. The live test in URL Inspection (external site) won’t do for this: it follows redirects without telling you.
6. Open your home page with http and https, with and without www. Every version must lead to the new URL without a certificate warning.
7. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. According to Google, you can then remove the old sitemap, and Bing advises removing redirected URLs from sitemaps promptly.
8. Submit new and redirected URLs through IndexNow. This protocol tells Bing and other search engines about changes right away. Google isn’t on its list of participants. According to IndexNow (external site), it’s fine to submit all your URLs at once after a migration or redesign. Our how-to Bing and IndexNow has the details.
9. Add an annotation (external site) for launch day to the Performance report in Search Console. It appears on the chart for everyone with access to the property.

Example: Your map lists https://example.com/services/ as the target. But the redirect goes to the URL without the trailing slash, and only from there to the final page. The check script reports 301 to https://example.com/services, expected https://example.com/services/. That way, you catch the mistake on day one.

Common mistake: The staging site’s robots.txt with Disallow: / goes live with the new site and blocks all of it. Google lists leftover blocks from the migration as a common mistake that can prevent the new site from being indexed completely.

Done when the check script reports no errors, none of the blocks from development is still in place, and the new sitemap is submitted in both tools.

What the tool does: A property is a website as it’s set up in Search Console. With a change of address, you ask Google to prioritize the new site for crawling and indexing. For 180 days, Google forwards signals from the old site to the new one and prefers the new site when it determines canonical pages. Old URLs without an equivalent on the new site can stay in search results as long as they’re available. Even with an equivalent, Google occasionally still shows the old URL when a query hints that someone might trust it more. According to Google, this fades away on its own (Google on old URLs after a move (external site)).

How to do it:

1. Verify the old and the new domain in Search Console with the same Google account.
2. Set up 301 redirects at least from the old home page to the new one, and from every canonical page. The tool checks a few of these redirects before it sends the request.
3. Open the tool in the old domain’s property. Submit the change of address for every verified variant of the old domain, including www and subdomains you don’t use.
4. If the new domain had a previous owner, check it for manual actions and URL removals left over from that owner. If you uploaded a disavow file for the old domain, upload it again for the new one. A disavow file lists links that Google shouldn’t take into account.
5. Add the new domain to Bing Webmaster Tools. Sites you import from Search Console count as verified there. Bing’s help doesn’t name a counterpart to the Change of Address tool in its list of tools (external site).
6. Update your address in profiles, directories and ads. Google specifically mentions social media profiles and ad campaigns. Our article Entity SEO explains why consistent company facts also matter to AI assistants.
7. Keep the old domain. Google recommends paying for it for at least another year so that no one can buy it and use it for malicious purposes.

Common mistake: The change of address is only submitted for example.com. But the tool doesn’t move any subdomains under the domain you specify, not even www.example.com.

Done when Search Console shows, for both the old and the new property, that the move is in progress, and the new domain is verified in both tools.

Why: After a move with URL changes, Google temporarily crawls the site more heavily than usual. If only the host changes, the crawl rate drops at first and then rises over the following days. It may even end up higher than before. Google frequently sees redirects to wrong, nonexistent URLs. They show up as an unusually high number of “Not found” errors.

How to do it:

1. Read your server logs, the records your server keeps of incoming requests. Is Googlebot fetching the new URLs, and which URLs unexpectedly return an error?
2. Open the Page indexing report (external site). For old URLs, “Page with redirect” is what you want. If a moved page shows “Not found (404),” the 301 is missing. “Redirect error” means, for example, that a chain is too long or runs in a loop. Our how-to Why isn’t my website showing up on Google? explains the other statuses.
3. Check your most important new URLs with URL Inspection, and request indexing where it’s missing.
4. In the Crawl Stats report (external site), see how your server responds to Googlebot, broken down by responses such as 301, 302 and 404. If a permanently moved page returns 302, Google says to change it to 301. For sites with fewer than 1,000 pages, Google says you shouldn’t need the report. Your logs are enough.
5. In Bing Webmaster Tools, check Site Explorer and URL Inspection.
6. Update internal links that still go through a redirect. Redirects slow pages down for visitors.
7. After a change of host, only shut down the old server once it no longer receives any requests.

Common mistake: A typo in the map sends a redirect to a target that doesn’t exist. Visitors and Googlebot land on an error page. The check script flags such rows with target returns 404.

Done when your logs no longer show unexpected errors, URL Inspection reports “URL is available to Google” for your most important new pages, and no internal link goes through a redirect anymore.

Why: According to Google, a page can only appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews and AI Mode if it’s indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet (external site). Google lists no other requirements. In the generative AI performance report, impressions count toward the URL a link leads to after any redirects. According to Bing, proper redirects preserve visibility and keep your pages in use as sources for AI answers. Bing adds that IndexNow helps reduce outdated URLs in Copilot’s responses. At OpenAI, it can take about 24 hours (external site) for a robots.txt change to take effect in ChatGPT search.

How to do it:

1. Compare the robots.txt of the old and the new site, especially the sections for AI crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, the crawler behind ChatGPT search.
2. Ask your new host whether bot protection or the firewall rejects requests from AI crawlers. OpenAI recommends allowing requests from its published IP ranges. Our article AI crawlers and robots.txt explains what else a firewall or CDN can break.
3. Add the URLs that AI assistants cited as sources before the migration to your redirect check. Bing Webmaster Tools lists such pages under AI Performance.
4. If you have an llms.txt file, update it with the new URLs. Our article on llms.txt covers what the file does.
5. After a few weeks, compare the reports on AI answers with your exports. The new URLs should gradually appear there.

Common mistake: Your robots.txt allows AI crawlers, but the new host’s firewall rejects their requests. Nobody sees that in robots.txt. Only the server logs show the error code.

Done when robots.txt contains your planned rules for AI crawlers, the server logs show their requests with status 200, and previously cited URLs redirect to the new pages.

Why: According to Google, fluctuations during the move are normal, and rankings settle down over time. Search Console assigns clicks to the final URL a search result leads to after any redirects. So clicks gradually shift from the old URLs to the new ones. When you compare two date ranges, Google advises using weekly or monthly figures so you don’t end up comparing a Monday with a Saturday (Google on comparing date ranges (external site)).

How to do it:

1. In the Performance report, compare periods of equal length before and after launch.
2. Put your redirect map next to the exports. That way, you compare each old page with its new URL.
3. Analyze branded and non-branded queries separately.
4. Also compare Search Performance and AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools with your exports.
5. Ask the owners of important sites that link to your old URLs to update their links. Google suggests starting with the links that bring the most visitors.
6. Measure your load times again four weeks after launch.

How long to keep the redirects: Google advises keeping them for as long as possible (external site), generally at least a year. For visitors, keeping them indefinitely is best. The help page on the Change of Address tool says at least 180 days. After that, Google treats an old domain as an unrelated site, as long as it’s still available.

Example: Clicks from searches for your company name stay the same, but clicks on your exterior painting page are still down weeks later. According to the redirect map, its content was merged into a general services page that barely mentions the word “exterior.” A separate page for that service would be the logical next step.

Common mistake: The comparison only looks at total clicks. More clicks from branded searches can then hide losses on searches for your services.

Done when you know for each important old page whether its new URL gets a similar number of clicks and impressions, and you’ve traced every major difference to a cause.