Post-migration diagnosis
Lost Google rankings after a website redesign? Here's what to check.
A drop after a redesign is almost always explainable, and usually fixable. Before assuming Google has simply decided against the new site, work through the technical causes in order — most cases trace back to one or two of them.
First, don't panic
Some movement after a migration is normal.
Every redesign changes something Google has to re-process — new templates, sometimes new URLs, sometimes a different internal linking structure. A short dip while that gets re-crawled and reassessed happens even on carefully planned migrations, and usually settles within a few weeks.
The distinction that matters is between brief settling-in noise and a sustained, significant drop that doesn't recover. The second is a signal that something concrete went wrong, and it's almost always one of a fairly short, well-understood list of causes.
The likely causes
What actually causes rankings to drop.
Changed URLs without redirects
The single biggest cause. If a page's address changed and nothing points the old one to the new one, Google — and anyone who had it bookmarked or linked to it — hits a dead end.
Missing or incorrect 301 redirects
Redirects that exist but point to the homepage instead of the closest equivalent page pass on far less value than a proper one-to-one mapping.
Deleted pages with no replacement
Service or location pages that quietly didn't make it into the new site take their rankings with them when they go.
Weaker replacement content
A new page at the same URL, but with less depth, fewer specifics or thinner detail than the one it replaced, can rank worse even with no technical fault at all.
Incorrect canonical tags
Canonicals pointing to the wrong page, or left over from a staging environment, tell Google to credit a different URL than the one people are actually visiting.
Accidental noindex tags
Extremely common after a migration — a staging noindex setting that never got removed before launch, quietly telling Google not to list pages at all.
Internal links removed or broken
If the new navigation and page content no longer link to a page the way the old site did, that page loses the internal authority it used to receive.
Title and meta description changes
Sometimes intentional, sometimes a side effect of a new template — either way, if they changed for the worse, click-through and relevance signals can dip.
Robots.txt issues
A robots.txt file accidentally left blocking crawlers, sometimes carried over from a staging setup, will stop Google reaching pages entirely.
Sitemap problems
An outdated or missing XML sitemap slows down how quickly Google finds and re-crawls the new structure.
JavaScript rendering changes
A new framework that relies heavily on client-side rendering can make content harder for search engines to see promptly, even if it's visible to a person.
Lost backlinks because old URLs now 404
External sites often can't be asked to update their links. If the pages they point to are gone, that earned authority is lost unless a redirect catches it.
Changed site architecture
A new structure that groups services differently, or removes a layer of navigation, can dilute the topical relevance the old structure had built up.
What to check first
A prioritised order, not a random list.
Work through these in sequence. Each step narrows down the cause, and most of the time you won't need to go past the first three or four.
- 01
Search Console coverage report
Start here. It tells you directly whether pages are indexed, excluded, or flagged with an error — rather than guessing.
- 02
Compare indexed pages: old vs new
Pull a list of URLs the old site had indexed and check each one against the new site. Anything missing is your priority list.
- 03
Redirect status of every old URL
Test each old URL directly. It should return a single 301 to the correct new page — not a 404, not a chain of redirects, not a redirect to the homepage.
- 04
Pages that disappeared entirely
For anything with no equivalent on the new site, decide fast: reinstate it, redirect it to the closest genuine match, or accept the loss knowingly.
- 05
Crawl errors in Search Console
Server errors, blocked resources and soft 404s reported after the migration date point straight at the technical cause.
- 06
Landing pages in Analytics
Check which pages are actually receiving the traffic that is arriving, and compare that against which pages used to receive it — this shows you where the gap really is.
- 07
Canonical tags on key pages
View source on your most important pages and confirm each canonical points to itself, on the live domain, not a staging URL.
- 08
Robots.txt and meta robots
Confirm robots.txt isn't blocking anything it shouldn't, and that no page carries a leftover noindex tag from development.
Prevention
This is why redesigns need SEO planning before launch, not after.
Nearly every cause on this page is preventable with the same discipline: a full inventory of existing URLs before a single new page is built, a deliberate decision on what's kept, rewritten or retired, a one-hop redirect map covering every change, and close monitoring of Search Console for the first weeks after launch. Fixing these issues after the fact is possible, but it's slower and sometimes some backlink value is genuinely lost by the time anyone notices.
Our website redesign page covers how we build that planning into the process itself. For a broader read on SEO generally, see SEO.
Before you ask
Common questions after a redesign.
Next step
Got a vision?
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