Moving your website without losing Google

A new website loses ground on Google only when old addresses lead nowhere. Every page Google knows needs a successor after the move, through a permanent redirect, status code 301. At Crystal’s Karaoke in Puerto Banús that meant 279 addresses, and the move on 24 September 2026 took 50 minutes. The effort is not in the switch but in the list before it. Where it comes from and how you verify it, here.

Where do the old addresses come from?

From three sources, and none is enough on its own. First, the old site’s sitemap. At Crystal’s it named exactly six pages. Second, the web’s memory: before the WordPress site there was, from 2015 to 2022, a site on a website builder with paths like /booking, /private-hire or /deposit. Those addresses have returned «not found» for years, and still Google listed one of them in its index in September 2026, with www in front. Third, your own search statistics: Search Console shows, page by page, what each one was found for in recent months. Whoever only writes down the addresses they remember forgets the ones that bring visitors.

At Crystal’s this added up to 279 addresses, including images and variants carrying a gallery parameter. Each one got a destination on the new site.

What is a redirect map?

A table: old address, new address. It lives on the server of the new website and answers every old address with code 301 and the new destination. Google then carries the old page’s standing over to the new one. A few rules from our work:

Every spelling belongs in the map: http://, https://, with and without www. At Crystal’s, www already redirected to the address without www; the new site does the same, in one hop, not two. No address points to a page that itself redirects. And no 410 answers, even if they look «cleaner»: 410 says «gone for good» and removes the page from the index faster, but transfers nothing to the successor.

Plugin sitemaps have more parts than you think. In another project in September we found four sitemap files instead of two, with category and author pages that were addresses too.

What about your ads?

The old Crystal’s site measured bookings with Google Ads and the Meta pixel: one conversion per submitted form. If the new site does not rebuild that measurement, running campaigns lose their conversion data on switch day. So the inventory before a move includes the trackers: which identifiers exist, which events they measure and on which page. On the new site they are rebuilt behind consent, which means the measured numbers will drop, not because there are fewer bookings, but because not everyone is measured any more.

How do you check that nothing gets lost?

Before the switch, locally: every line of the map is requested and must answer 301 to the right destination. At Crystal’s: 279 of 279. After the switch, from outside: the same list again against the real address, because between the server and the visitor there is often another service that alters answers. Then Search Console: remove the old sitemap, submit the new one, and after a few days look at the pages marked «redirect» in the report. Those are the ones that work.

One more detail: at Crystal’s the domain sat with a reseller whose name servers also handled e-mail. Whoever cancels the hosting before moving the zone loses the mail along with the website. That is why a move starts with an inventory of domain, DNS and e-mail, before anyone cancels anything.