Change of Address in Google Search Console, and the Six Moves It Refuses

Your firm can change its name in a week and lose a year of search traffic doing it.

Mergers do this. So do rebrands, splits and the day a partner's name finally comes off the letterhead.

The change of address in Google Search Console is the tool built for the job, and most of the work it gets credit for is work you have to do yourself before you open it.

Read what it moves before you buy the domain.

What the change of address tool actually does

It sends Google a signal. Google's own site move guidance says the tool "tells Google about your change, and helps to migrate your Google Search results from your old site to your new site", and the verb helps is doing real work in that sentence.

What follows the request is worth knowing in detail.

Nothing on that list moves a page. Your redirects move the pages, and the tool tells Google to expect it.

Six months is the window, and after it closes the new domain has to stand on its own signals, which is why the redirects matter more than the request ever does.

The six moves it will not handle

Plenty of jobs that feel like a site move fall outside the tool. Google lists them, and every one of them sends firms hunting for a button that was never there.

• Moving from HTTP to HTTPS: A certificate change is not a domain change, so the tool declines it.
• Moving pages inside one domain: A path-level reshuffle is a redirect job with no address to change.
• Switching between www and non-www: Google treats this as the same site, and so should you.
• Changing host, same addresses: No visible address moved, so there is nothing to tell Google.
• Any move with no user-visible URL change: The tool keys off the address a person can see.
• Subdomains under the domain you name: Google says the request "does not move any subdomains below the specified domain".

That last one catches professional firms hardest. A client portal or a document exchange sitting on its own subdomain has to be handled as a separate move, with its own redirects and its own request.

Check what lives on a subdomain today, because somebody set one up years ago and nobody remembers.

What has to be true before you press the button

Four conditions, and the tool refuses the request if any of them is missing.

1. You own both properties in Search Console, under one Google account.
2. Both are domain properties, so a property covering only part of a site will not qualify.
3. Every subdomain variant is verified as well as the bare domain.
4. The 301 redirects are already live and already tested.

The fourth one is the whole game.

Firms tend to file the request as step one because it feels official, then wire the redirects afterwards, which is the order that produces a fortnight of missing pages. Do the mapping instead. Every page on the old site gets a row in a spreadsheet, a new home written beside it, and a tick once somebody has loaded the new address in a browser and watched it answer, because a redirect that was typed but never tested is the single most common reason these projects go wrong in week two.

A page with no obvious new home still needs a decision, and the honest choices are a redirect to the nearest match or a clean removal.

How long do the redirects have to stay up?

Longer than anyone plans for, and Google's two pages disagree about how much longer.

Take the longer number. The site move documentation explains why in the same breath, saying a year "allows Google to transfer all signals to the new URLs, including recrawling and reassigning links on other sites that point to your old URLs".

Links on other sites are the part firms forget. A directory entry, a bar association page or an old press mention will keep pointing at the dead address for years, and every one of them needs the redirect to still be answering.

So budget for a year of paying for two domains. It is the cheapest line in the whole project.

Why does a rename plus a redesign cost more?

Because Google has to work out two changes at once.

Its guidance is blunt about sequencing, telling site owners to change only one thing at a time and to plan changes one after another instead of all together.

Combining a move with a redesign, Google warns, may cost traffic, because "Google might need to relearn and reassess the individual pages".

• Move the site on the current design, then redesign a month later.
• Keep page titles, headings and body copy identical through the move.
• Change the addresses or the content, never both in the same week.
• Expect a wobble regardless, since Google says visibility "may fluctuate temporarily during the move".

That wobble has a timescale attached. For a mid-sized site Google says it can take a few weeks or more before the new pages start showing instead of the old ones, so a partner asking for a verdict after four days is asking too early.

If the numbers are still down at eight weeks, that is a traffic drops investigation and no longer a migration one.

The old domain is not finished with you

Keep paying for the registration.

Google advises holding the old registration for about a year, and there is a second reason to hold it far longer than that.

An expired domain that once belonged to an advisory firm is a gift to somebody running an impersonation scam. The FTC's Impersonation Rule outlaws exactly this trick, banning the practice of "spoofing government or business email or web addresses, including the bogus use of '.gov' email addresses or adopting lookalike email addresses or URLs that rely on misspellings of a company's name".

• Email is the real exposure: Clients keep sending to the old address for years, and whoever holds the domain reads it.
• Old links still carry trust: A citation on a chamber or regulator page points at a name a scammer can now answer to.
• Renewal is cheap insurance: A domain costs less per year than one hour of anyone's time cleaning up after a fake.
• Who is renewing it? Name the person, because a card that expires quietly is how firms lose these.

Firms with a client portal should treat this as the top of the list. A prospect who cannot tell your new address from a copy of your old one has no way to check.

Should you check the name before you buy the domain?

Yes, and the search is free.

The USPTO runs a Trademark Search system and tells applicants to run a clearance search before adopting a mark, because the question it settles is likelihood of confusion.

A domain registrar will sell you an address that a trademark holder can later take off you. The registrar has no view on the name and no duty to warn you.

1. Search the exact new name, then the obvious misspellings of it.
2. Search the name your clients already use for you, which is often shorter.
3. Check the state register for the practice name as well as the federal mark.
4. Buy the close misspellings of your own domain at the same time, and point them at the live site.

Getting your business name settled before launch also keeps the listings work sane, since a mid-flight name change is one of the fastest routes to a suspended profile.

Before you buy the new domain

A domain move is a sequencing problem wearing a technical costume. The tool at the end of it is useful, and it is also the last five minutes of a job that runs for a year.

• Do the mapping first: Every old URL gets a new home or a documented removal.
• Move once, change once: The design, the copy and the address never travel together.
• Hold the old domain: A year is the floor and longer is better for a regulated practice.
• Write down who owns it: The renewal, the redirects and the Search Console properties all need a name against them.

Two pages that both survive the move can end up chasing the same searches, which is a two pages competing problem worth catching early. If the new site is live and still missing from results, the diagnosis for indexed and not ranking is a different job again.

Our team plans and runs these moves for professional firms, and the mapping is where we spend most of the hours. Talk to us about an SEO project before the new name is announced, because the cheapest version of this work happens before anybody sees the change.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we lose our backlinks in a rebrand?

Inbound links keep working while your redirects answer them, and their value transfers as Google recrawls each linking page over the following months.

Can we serve two versions of the site at once?

Two live copies invite Google to pick a winner you did not choose, and the pick is rarely the one you wanted. Serve one and redirect the other from day one.

What about the mailboxes we are leaving behind?

Mail travels separately from a website and needs a plan of its own. Forward every account, tell clients in writing that the switch has happened, and keep the forwarded messages under your retention policy.

Is a long slump after a rebrand normal?

Weeks of wobble are ordinary. Half a year of loss usually means a step was skipped, so ask whoever ran the project for the mapping document and the redirect test results before you accept the explanation.

Does a subdomain need its own request?

Each one sits outside the parent request and has to be handled as a separate project, with its own mapping, its own redirects and its own filing.