Google has updated its site migration guide to include new information about using the Search Console Address Change Tool to move domain names.
Search Console Change Address Tool
Google’s Change Address Tool is to help site owners who are moving a site from one domain to another. The tool helps Google migrate search rankings from an old domain to a new domain.
There are four situations in which Google does not recommend the use of the Change Address tool:
1. Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS.
2. Changing category URLs.
3. Migration between WWW and non-WWW.
4. When moving between web hosts or changing CDN provider but the URLs remain the same.
Revised Guidance
New requirements include moving from one domain to a new domain. It now recommends including WWW, non-WWW, and subdomain variations, even if they are not used.
The following recommendations have been added to the guide:
“For domain migration: When moving your site from one domain to another, be sure to submit address change requests for all subdomains and www and non-www variants of the old domain name (for example, from en.example.com, www.example.com, and example.com to new-example.net), even if you don’t fully use these features in Search all variants.
Screenshot of New Requirements
In other words:
- When moving a website to a new domain, submit a change of address request for all verified versions of the old domain.
- Include all subdomains of both the www and non-www versions, even if some may not be used.
- For example, send requests for variables such as en.example.com, www.example.com, and example.com when migrating to new-example.net.
- Before submitting requests, verify all domain types in the search console.
Take away
Google added the requirement to its guidance without explaining why it’s asking users to do it. They forgot to add that important detail. Google Docs tends to be a bit sloppy.
For example, one of the changes to the documents was to fix a sentence that does not have the preposition “about” after the word “decisions.”
“Use or enable redirection: depending on your choices your redirection strategy…”
Here’s how it should read:
“Use or enable redirection: depending on your choices about your redirection strategy…”
The real reason for the new requirement is in their Changelog which is on a completely separate web page.
This is the reason it was left out of the updated guidance:
“Site migrations work best when all site types are migrated correctly.”
The reason is that site migration from one domain to another works best if all types are included as part of the migration process. And the unexplained reason for that is because linking patterns may cause Google to specify one of these exceptions that may present search performance issues.
Featured image by Shutterstock/leolintang
