Google’s John Mueller recently shared key insights about website migrations, highlighting why partial or staggered moves often result in degradation SEO result. Website owners who move only parts of their website to a new domain face greater challenges than those who do a complete migration at once. Mueller emphasizes that these incomplete changes confuse Google’s systems and make it difficult to maintain rankings.
SEO Result: Why Partial Site Migrations Cause Problems
Mueller answered a question about usage Google Search Console‘s tool for changing addresses during a location change. First, a user asked if he could submit the new domain even though some old URLs still received traffic and had no redirects.
Mueller responded that this approach usually works well. He noted that some websites keep the old robots.txt file with an “allow:/” rule to allow Google to crawl everything. The tool also checks whether the homepage redirects properly.
However, the situation changed when the user revealed more details. They had already moved the homepage to the new domain, but planned to keep many product and category pages on the old domain for now. This resulted in a phased migration where the site was split between two domains.
Mueller quickly adjusted his advice. He explained that Google doesn’t see this as a complete website move. Website owners can still use the address change tool, but the process becomes messy until everything is fully transferred.
- Google has difficulty understanding the websites clearly.
- Website owners struggle to track performance and rankings.
- Migration lacks a “clean plan,” making recovery more difficult.
Mueller recommends cleaning up the setup as quickly as possible. He acknowledges that staggered migrations are sometimes done for practical reasons, but warns that they make things more complicated than a well-planned full move.
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Experts point out that Mueller often talks about Google’s “understanding” of a website. This refers to how the search engine associates the domain with the quality of the content, relevance and its place on the web. Partial migrations disrupt this process and pose the risk of a negative outcome SEO result.
In short: Complete your website migration in one step to protect your rankings. Avoid staggered movements unless absolutely necessary, and correct quickly if you start doing them.
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