A new domain, and nearly all the search traffic stayed behind

When a website moves to a new domain without a plan for search, the traffic often stays behind. We saw it recently: a client's site moved, and nearly all of its visits from Google did not follow.

The pattern is common, and the outcomes are predictable. If you're weighing a redesign, rebrand or new domain, this is the part to get right before launch day.

What it looks like

• Search visits fall off a cliff. The new domain starts with little of the standing the old one built up over years.
• People searching for you by name struggle to find you. These are your easiest visitors: they already know you and want your website.
• People still choosing a provider stop seeing you. Rankings for searches about what you offer are slower to come back, and these are the visitors a website has to win.
• Fewer visits reach your contact or inquiry form. SEO tools count visits, not leads, so the full cost shows up later in your own inquiry numbers.

Why traffic can stay behind

Google ranks pages, and each page lives at a web address, or URL. Links and history build up behind those old addresses over years. When you move to a new domain, Google has to learn that each new URL replaces an old one. Google's guide to site moves says permanent redirects, which send visitors and Google from each old address to its new one automatically, "don't cause a loss in PageRank" (Google's link-based measure of a page's standing), and that keeping them in place "allows Google to transfer all signals to the new URLs." A new domain without redirects has to build those signals again.

An older site can also keep outranking you. When two sites cover the same business, Google picks which one to show. Google treats a redirect as "a strong signal that the target of the redirect should become canonical," according to its page on duplicate URLs. Canonical is Google's word for the version it shows in results. For a domain move, the Change of Address tool in Search Console, Google's free dashboard for site owners, tells Google "to prefer the new site over the old when determining canonical pages." Any older site for the same business that keeps running without a redirect keeps competing with the new one.

Even a planned move can shift rankings for a while. Google tells site owners to "expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move," and says a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move. If traffic falls far and stays down for weeks, check your redirects and Search Console.

What a planned move includes

Google Search Central lays out the steps. A planned domain change covers:

1. A URL map. List each old URL and the new URL that replaces it, page by page.
2. Permanent redirects. Set up permanent (301) redirects on your server from each old URL to its match. Google warns against sending many old URLs to one page, such as the new home page, and against chaining redirects, where one redirect leads to another.
3. Search Console on both domains. Verify the old and new sites, submit a Change of Address for the old domain, and submit a sitemap, a list of your pages for Google, for the new one.
4. Updated links. Point links between your own pages, and the canonical tags that tell Google which address is the main one, at the new URLs, and ask the sites that link to you most to update their links.
5. Patience with the old domain. Google says to keep redirects for at least a year where you can, and to keep paying for the old domain for at least a year so nobody else registers it.
6. One change at a time. Google advises planning changes "one after the other, not everything at the same time." A new domain, new design and new content in one launch leave you guessing which change hurt.
7. Old sites folded in. We recommend redirecting or retiring older sites for the same business so they stop competing with the new one.
8. Monitoring. Watch Search Console and your analytics after launch. Google expects traffic on the old site to go down while traffic on the new site goes up. If the new site stays flat, you want to know in the first weeks.

Before you change domains

A new name can be the right call for a business. Plan the search side before you launch it. Brown Walrus works with SEO experts to help ensure a smooth transition. If a redesign, rebrand or domain change is on your list, read about our web development work or get in touch before you switch.