How do you move a website without losing search traffic?

Map every old URL to its new address before launch, put permanent server-side redirects in place for anything that changes, update internal links and sitemaps, and monitor both the old and new addresses afterward. Google's own site move guidance says to expect temporary fluctuation, so the aim is a short, documented dip rather than a lasting loss. Keeping URLs unchanged where you can removes much of the risk.

Traffic losses after a rebuild are rarely caused by the new design. They usually come from addresses that changed without a redirect, pages that were dropped because no one knew they brought in visitors, or a setting from the test site that told search engines to stay away. Each of those is preventable with a list and a checklist.

This page is for owners and marketing leads planning a platform change or rebuild. It summarizes Google's published guidance and is not a promise about how any site will perform after a move. For how a move fits into a build, see Hudson South's website build process.

Start with an inventory of what already works

Google puts the first step plainly: "It's important to map your old site's URLs to the URLs for the new site." You cannot map what you have not listed. Pull every address from four places: the current XML sitemap, the pages report in Google Search Console, the landing pages report in your analytics, and any list of sites that link to you. A page nobody reaches from the menu is not a page nobody visits. Old articles, PDF guides and retired service pages often bring in steady visits that the current menu hides.

Mark each address with a decision: keep at the same URL, move to a new URL, merge into another page, or retire. Retired pages still need somewhere sensible to send people, which is usually the closest page on the new site.

Save the content as well as the addresses. Before anything is rewritten, keep a copy of each important page's title, headings and main text. If a page loses visitors after launch, the team can compare old and new versions side by side instead of guessing what changed.

Build the redirect map

Google recommends HTTP permanent redirects where possible, "such as 301 and 308," and advises keeping them "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year." Its redirect documentation explains why the type matters: with a permanent redirect, the indexing pipeline treats the target as the page that should be canonical, while a temporary redirect does not send that signal. JavaScript redirects are a last resort, because if rendering fails, Google "might never see it."

Each platform has its own way to hold that map. Netlify reads rules from a _redirects file or its configuration file, and its documentation says that when no status code is set, the default is 301. Squarespace uses URL mappings written as an old path, an arrow and a new path, with the code at the end, and its help center says "301 redirects are meant for permanent changes." Redirecting old URLs is part of every Hudson South build when a site moves.

Launch day checklist

Google recommends moving all URLs at the same time for small and medium sites; larger sites can move one section at a time. On the day itself, work through a short list in order.

1. Remove any noindex rule left over from the test site. Google's documentation defines noindex as an instruction not to show the page in search results.
2. Change internal links from old URLs to new ones, rather than relying on redirects inside your own site.
3. Publish an updated XML sitemap that lists the new URLs.
4. If the domain itself is changing, submit a Change of Address in Search Console for the old site.
5. Test a sample of redirects by hand, starting with the highest-traffic pages.
6. Submit a test entry on every form and confirm the email arrives.

Developers are usually confident about redirects, so make the check concrete. Before launch, ask for a walk-through: "Show me where each of our top twenty landing pages goes after launch, and what happens when I visit the old address." Ten minutes in a browser settles more than any status report.

What to expect afterward

Google is direct about the weeks after a move: "Expect temporary fluctuation in site ranking during the move," and a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move. It recommends monitoring user and crawler traffic on both the new site and the old one. If only the hosting changes and every URL stays the same, Google has separate guidance: a temporary drop in crawl rate right after launch is normal, and lowering DNS time-to-live values at least a week ahead makes the switch quicker.

Hudson South has been through a move of its own. In October 2026 it moved hudsonsouth.ai from Squarespace to a hand-built site on Netlify, keeping existing addresses or redirecting them.

Keep a short, dated log during those weeks: the launch date, any redirect fixes, and edits to important pages. When someone asks a month later why traffic moved, the log answers faster than memory.

A fictional example: the page that almost disappeared

Here is a fictional example. A personal injury firm in Georgia is rebuilding its site and plans to drop its old blog, which nobody has updated in three years. The inventory shows that one 2021 article about what to do after a car accident brings in more first-time visitors than any practice page. The new plan keeps the subject, moves the article to a new URL with a 301 redirect, and asks an attorney to review it against current law before relaunch.

A move is a good time to fix weak pages, provided the redirect map comes first. Even then, the facts in a rewritten page still come from the firm, and the writer should not have to invent what the attorneys know. Hudson South runs every build in the same order. Authority Asset gathers approved business knowledge and evidence. Hudson Twenty-One records how the business communicates across 21 dimensions, so the pages sound like the people who answer the phone. Market Intelligence researches the questions buyers ask and how the market answers them. AEO Creation turns those inputs into answer-first pages. For the address structure itself, see how to organize URLs and page hierarchy, and for the scope decision that comes before a move, read whether to redesign or rebuild.

Know what you are moving before you move it

On a free 30-minute call, we compare your current site with the competitors your buyers also look at, so the rebuild starts from what already works.

Sources

1. Site Moves and Migrations. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-17.
2. Redirects and Google Search. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-17.
3. Changing Your Web Hosting and SEO. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-17.
4. Robots Meta Tags Specifications. Google Search Central. Read 2026-10-17.
5. Redirects and rewrites. Netlify Docs. Read 2026-10-17.
6. Redirect options. Netlify Docs. Read 2026-10-17.
7. URL mappings. Squarespace Help Center. Read 2026-10-17.