Understanding SEO Challenges During Domain Migration: A Case Study
Migrating a website to a new domain is a strategic move often undertaken to enhance brand credibility, improve user trust, and boost SEO performance. However, as with any significant change, it can come with unforeseen challenges that impact search engine rankings and visibility. This article analyzes a real-world scenario involving a domain migration that has encountered persistent SEO issues, providing insights and potential solutions for similar situations.
The Scenario: A Domain Transition Without Clear Results
An independent project, “Horse,” recently migrated its primary landing page from browser.horse to gethorse.com. The migration process appeared thorough and correctly executed, following best practices such as:
- Implementing 301 redirects for all URLs
- Maintaining identical website content
- Submitting and confirming a Change of Address in Google Search Console
- Ensuring full indexing of the new domain
- Updating internal links, canonical tags, sitemaps, and robots.txt
- Updating relevant backlinks to the new domain
Despite these efforts, the expected benefits of migration—such as improved rankings and visibility—have not materialized after nearly three months. Instead, several persistent issues have been observed:
- The old domain (browser.horse) continues to dominate search results for branded queries, such as “horse browser.”
- The new domain (gethorse.com) remains absent from search results for most queries, including its homepage.
- The only way to view pages from gethorse.com is through site-specific searches (
site:gethorse.com). - In some cases, even highly specific queries—like searching for the site title and subtitle—still display the old domain first or not at all.
Such symptoms suggest that Google is not attributing the new domain as the primary entity for the site’s content, and the migration hasn’t effectively transferred rankings.
Potential Causes and Considerations
While the migration process adheres to standard guidelines, several underlying factors could explain the lack of visibility:
a. Indexing and Crawling Delays
Despite prompt indexing, search engines sometimes take longer to recast rankings after significant URL changes, especially if certain signals are missing or ambiguous.
b. Conflicting Signals Between Domains
If canonical tags, sitemap entries, or internal links still point to the old domain, Google might interpret content as duplicated or maintain the old domain’s authority.
c. Backlink Profile and Authority Transfer
Although backlinks have been updated, some backlinks to the old domain may