Google published a new video about site migrations. John Mueller offered insights into how Google handles website migrations and how long they can take. The major takeaways are that site migrations can be difficult and that a comprehensive plan needs to be in place before the migration.
The video begins with a question:
“We’re currently going through a site migration and we’d also like to restructure the URLs on the site. Does this impose any risks?”
Migrating a site typically means changing the domain name, sometimes because the company is merged with another one or because the branding changed.
Joining two sites together are the trickiest because you have to choose what URLs will remain and which will be merged into existing pages that are similar.
John Mueller answered:
“Unfortunately, while this may at first sound like a small change within a website, it’s not that simple for search engines.
In particular, search engines like Google store their index on a per-page basis.
So if you change the address or the URL of a page, that page’s data has to be forwarded somehow, otherwise it gets lost.