Migration Compare: measure traffic before and after a site move

Migration Compare checks how much search traffic survived a migration. Give it a migration date, a window length and two sources (the old and new domain, two URL prefixes or two URL patterns), and it lines up the days before and after, matches old pages to new ones, and labels every page and query as recovered, partially recovered, lost or new. Use it a few weeks after a move to find what did not come across.

Choose what to compare

Under Comparison mode:

• Cross-property: two Search Console properties, for a domain or subdomain move. Source A is the property before the migration, Target B the one after.
• URL Prefixes: two paths within one property, such as /blog/ before and /articles/ after.
• Regex Patterns: two regular expressions matched against full URLs, for restructures a prefix cannot describe.

Then set the Migration date and the Window length: 14, 28 (default), 56 or 91 days before and after. The before window is the stretch just before the date, the after window starts on it; the after window is cut short if Search Console has no data yet for its last days, and the page shows the exact dates it will compare. Press Compare.

Add redirect mappings

Pages are matched by their path by default: /pricing on the old domain is paired with /pricing on the new one, ignoring host, letter case, trailing slashes and query strings. When URLs changed, open Redirect Mappings and paste your redirect list, one from_url, to_url pair per line (comma, tab or semicolon separated). Mapped pages are matched through their redirect target; everything else still matches by path.

How pages and queries are rated

For every pair, AutoPSEO compares clicks in the after window with the before window:

Pages and queries without a click in either window are listed as having no traffic. Traffic recovery at the top is total clicks after divided by total clicks before. Page-level recovery uses only the pages that existed before, so new pages cannot hide losses.

Read the results

• The cards summarise both windows and the recovery rate.
• Before vs after, aligned by day overlays the two windows day by day, the old one dashed, so a slow recovery and a sharp drop look different. The metric buttons switch between clicks, impressions, CTR and position.
• Page mapping lists every page with its old and new URL, how it was matched (same path, redirect map or not at all), its status and its clicks, impressions and position before and after. Up to 5,000 rows.
• Query comparison opens with the biggest losses in clicks first, with tabs for Lost, Partially, Recovered and New. Up to 2,000 rows.

What the results usually mean

• Lost pages matched by path: check that the old URL redirects to the new one with a permanent redirect, in one hop, to a page with the same content.
• Lost pages with no match: either the content was dropped or the redirect list is incomplete. Add the missing mappings and run again.
• Recovered pages but lost queries: the pages survived but some content or internal links did not.
• Everything partially recovered: give it time. Google recommends permanent (301 or 308) redirects, keeping them for at least a year, and warns that visibility can fluctuate during a move (site moves with URL changes). For a domain change, also file a Change of Address in Search Console.

Mark the migration date with an annotation so the dashboard and analytics charts show it.

How AutoPSEO helps

When you move a section that AutoPSEO writes for, its content types keep the path each page was first published under, so changing a type's path for new pages does not break existing ones. When an article is merged into another, your site is told to answer the old address with a 301 to the one that stays (keeping articles fresh).