How does the Change of Address tool work?

The Change of Address tool, opened from the old site's property in Search Console, tells Google that an entire domain or subdomain has moved to a new one. For the next 180 days Google prioritises crawling and indexing the new site, forwards signals from the old site and prefers the new URLs when choosing canonicals. It only works together with 301 redirects you have already put in place, and only for moves between domains or subdomains.

When to use it, and when not to

Use it when the address of the whole site changes: example.com to example.org, one subdomain to another domain, or a whole domain into a path on another domain such as example3.com/new/location/.

Do not use it for:

• HTTP to HTTPS. Google detects that move on its own.
• www to non-www on the same domain. Redirects and canonical tags handle it.
• Moving some pages within a site. Use redirects and update your sitemaps.
• New hosting or a CDN with unchanged URLs. Nothing changes for Google.

Before you submit

1. Redirect everything. Each old URL should 301-redirect to its equivalent on the new site, the homepage at the very least and ideally every canonical page.
2. Verify both sites, and be an owner of both properties with the same Google account.
3. Use domain-level properties. The tool works on example.com, https://example.com or m.example.com, but not on a path-level property such as https://example.com/shop/.
4. Cover every host. The tool does not move subdomains of the domain you pick, www included. Verify and move each variant you have used, such as www, the bare domain or en.. Protocols move together: choosing http://example.com moves https://example.com too.

Step by step

1. In the old site's property, open Settings and choose Change of address.
2. Select the new site from your list of properties.
3. Let the tool run its checks. Critical checks, such as ownership and 301 redirects on a sample of pages, must pass. Non-critical ones show warnings you can override.
4. Submit. Both properties then show a notice that the move is in progress for 180 days.

After the move

• Keep the redirects for at least 180 days, and longer while the old URLs still get traffic from Google. Google also suggests keeping the old domain registered for at least a year.
• Expect old URLs to linger. Google does not delete the old site from its index; old URLs can still appear where the new site has no equivalent page.
• Move one site at a time. Do not chain moves or merge several sites into one at once. Keeping the same site structure helps; combining a move with a redesign will probably cost some traffic.
• You can cancel within 180 days: remove the old-to-new redirects, redirect the new site back, and choose Cancel move in the tool.

Each property keeps its own data. The new property only reports the new URLs, and the old one's history ages out after 16 months, so save it before you need a before-and-after comparison. See how long Search Console keeps data.

How AutoPSEO helps

Migration Compare puts the before and after side by side: two properties, two URL prefixes or two regular expressions, with an optional redirect map pasted as CSV or TSV so old and new URLs are paired exactly. Every page is classed as recovered (90% or more of its old clicks), partly recovered (25% or more), lost or new, with the queries that moved. Turning on full storage for the old property keeps its history after Google drops it. See administration.

Sources: Google's Change of Address tool help and site moves with URL changes.