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How to Move Your Blog to a New Domain, Step by Step

Editorial responsibility: SearchCub

Created: Edited:

To move your blog to a new domain, copy it across with every post at the same path, send each old address to its new one with a permanent 301 redirect, then tell Google with Search Console's Change of Address tool and keep the redirects for at least a year. Google calls this a site move with URL changes. The steps below follow its site move guide, last updated 20 August 2026, and the Search Console help pages, as checked on 8 October 2026.

Before you start: three decisions

Change one thing at a time. Google's site move guide asks for one change after another: if you also want a new design or platform, move the domain first. Its Change of Address help adds that keeping the same site structure helps pass signals to the new site more directly, while combining a move with a redesign of content and URLs will probably lose some traffic. So keep every post's path, the part of the address after the domain, exactly as it is.

Choose a domain you'll keep. Google's help says you can't chain moves: after a change of address from site A to site B, you can't immediately submit another from B to C. Still choosing a name? Does your domain name affect SEO? covers what to weigh before you buy.

Move everything at once, in a quiet week. For small and medium sites, Google recommends moving all URLs together rather than in sections, which helps it detect the move and update its index faster. If your traffic dips on certain weekdays or seasons, it suggests moving during a dip, when fewer readers will meet any problems.

This guide covers a change of domain or subdomain. Switching from HTTP to HTTPS is also a site move, but without the Change of Address tool; does HTTPS affect SEO? covers that switch. Nor is the tool used for moving between www and non-www on one domain, or for new paths on the same domain.

Moving off a subdomain of a hosted blogging service? Check its help first: to use the Change of Address tool, you'll need to verify that address in Search Console and send 301 redirects from it.

Step 1: Add both domains to Search Console

Google's site move guide asks you to verify the old and new sites in Search Console, including every variant: with and without www, plus HTTP and HTTPS if your site uses HTTPS. A Domain property covers all of a domain's subdomains and protocols at once. You verify it with a DNS record at the company that manages your domain, unless the blog is on Blogger or Google Sites (Search Console Help: add a property). What is Google Search Console? walks through adding and verifying one.

Then check these five things:

  • One Google account. The Change of Address tool requires you to be an owner of both properties, managing both with the same Google account.

  • A separate www property. The tool doesn't move subdomains, www included, so each version of the old domain needs its own property and its own move request (Step 7). A property you add under a verified Domain property, such as https://www.example.com/, is verified by the same method (Search Console Help: verify ownership).

  • Verification that survives the switch. If you verified with an HTML file or tag, Google's guide says to make sure the new site includes it. Search Console won't follow a redirect to another domain to find a verification file; for a site that redirects all its traffic elsewhere, Google recommends the HTML tag method.

  • A clean secondhand domain. If the new domain had an earlier owner, open its Manual actions report and Removals tool. Google's guide says to fix any manual action and file a reconsideration request, and to make sure no URL removals are left over, especially one for the whole site.

  • Your disavow file. If you uploaded one for the old site, Google recommends uploading it again in the new site's property.

Step 2: Copy the blog to the new domain

Set up the new site, preferably on the same blogging platform, and import your posts. Bring across the images and downloads you host, such as PDFs, which the site move guide notes may already get visits from Google Search or links. Add your analytics to the new domain too, so you can compare both sites during the move.

If you block crawling or use noindex while the new site is unfinished, Google's guide says to prepare the robots.txt file for launch and a list of pages to take noindex off. On WordPress, checking Discourage search engines from indexing this site under Settings > Reading asks search engines not to index the site (WordPress: Reading settings), so when the move starts, uncheck it and click Save Changes.

Step 3: Map every old address to its new one

If every path stays the same, the map is one rule: example.com/any-post/ goes to example.net/any-post/. Google's site move guide says a simple domain change like this may not need a list of old URLs at all, because a wildcard redirect on the server can cover them.

List your important URLs anyway, so you can test them later. Google suggests looking in your sitemap, your analytics or server logs, the Links report in Search Console and your blogging platform's list of posts and pages. Search Console's Performance report also shows clicks from Google for each post on its Pages tab. Include the images, videos and other files your posts embed: they move like everything else.

If any address changes, decide where each old URL goes. Posts you've combined into one can redirect to the combined post; posts you're dropping should return a 404 or 410 error on the new site. Don't send them all to the home page: Google warns that redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant page can confuse readers and may be treated as a soft 404.

Step 4: Update the new site's links and canonicals

Before you switch, the site move guide asks for these changes on the new site:

  • Canonical tags. Each new URL should carry a rel="canonical" tag naming its own address.

  • Internal links. Point the links between your posts at the new addresses, using your map. Internal links for SEO covers where to place them and how to word them.

  • Language annotations. If your posts have language versions marked up with hreflang, update those to the new URLs.

Save two lists for later: a sitemap of the new URLs, and the sites that link to your old URLs. The old property in Search Console shows those sites under Links > External links > Top linking sites, though the Links report holds a sample of links, not every one. For another view, SearchCub's Backlinks lists the pages linking to a site, with their anchor text, from third-party data.

Step 5: Switch on 301 redirects

Google recommends server-side permanent redirects, such as 301 or 308, from each old URL to its new one. Ask your host what you can set up: Google's examples are rules in an .htaccess file on an Apache server, or your blogging platform's redirect functions. Its redirects guide, last updated 14 April 2026, adds that platforms such as Blogger may have redirects built in; search their help, for example for blogger redirects. If no server-side redirect is possible, the site move guide allows client-side redirects only as a last resort.

Three rules from Google's guides:

  • Permanent, not temporary. Google's redirects guide matches the redirect type to the page you want shown in search results: a permanent redirect for the new address, a temporary one, such as a 302, for the old page. Permanent redirects don't cause a loss in PageRank, the site move guide adds.

  • Straight to the final address. Googlebot follows up to 10 redirects in a chain, but Google advises redirecting straight to the destination, or else keeping chains short: ideally no more than 3, and fewer than 5.

  • No leftover setup blocks. Once the redirects are live, check that the new site's canonical tags use the new URLs, and remove any noindex rules or robots.txt blocks from setup. Forgotten blocks head the site move guide's list of common mistakes that can stop a new site from being indexed completely.

Step 6: Test the redirects

Open some old addresses in your browser: the home page, your most visited posts, an image and a dropped post. Each should land on its new address, or on a 404 error page for the dropped post. The Change of Address tool looks for 301s, so test each version of the old domain you'll submit, with and without www.

To see the redirect type, check the status code with curl, a free command-line tool that also ships with Windows 10 and 11 (curl for Windows). Run curl -I and an old address; -I fetches only the headers (curl manual). A permanent redirect shows 301 or 308, with a Location header giving the new address. In Windows PowerShell, type curl.exe -I, because there curl is a shortcut for a different command (Microsoft: Invoke-WebRequest).

Google's guide also suggests Search Console's URL Inspection tool for single URLs. Its live test follows a redirect without saying so and reports on the final page; redirects show in the indexed result, which reflects Google's most recently indexed version (Search Console Help: URL Inspection).

Step 7: Submit a Change of Address

Search Console Help says to use the Change of Address tool after you've moved and redirected the site. Besides owning both properties under one Google account (Step 1):

  • The old property must be a whole domain or subdomain, such as example.com, not a path such as example.com/blog/. The new site can be a path on another domain.

  • Each version of the old domain needs its own verified property and request, www and non-www included, even a version you don't use. The tool moves every protocol of the property you choose, so moving http://example.com also moves https://example.com.

Then:

  1. Finish the pre-work: a 301 redirect from your old home page to your new home page, the 301s for the old site's canonical pages that Google also recommends, and the site move guide's other preparation (Steps 1 to 6).

  2. Open the Change of Address tool in the old site's property; the help page links straight to it.

  3. Follow the tool's instructions. Before telling Google, it confirms that you own both sites and looks for 301s on a few pages. A failed critical check must be fixed before you can continue; a failed non-critical one shows a warning with recommendations, but your request can continue.

  4. Repeat for each other version of the old domain.

Once the critical checks pass, Search Console shows a notice on both sites that the move is in progress, for 180 days. Over those 180 days, Google emphasizes crawling and indexing the new site over the old, forwards signals from the old site to the new one and prefers the new site when choosing canonical pages. You can cancel within the same 180 days; the help page lists the steps.

Step 8: Submit the new sitemap and update outside links

Submit the new site's sitemap in the new property's Sitemaps report. The site move guide says you can then remove the old sitemap, because Google will use the new one going forward. XML sitemaps for bloggers shows how to find and submit yours.

As soon as the move starts, update the links you can reach. Google's guide suggests asking the sites on your saved list to update their links, starting with those that send you the most visitors, and updating your social profile links and any ad campaigns. The redirects will catch old links, but Google notes that redirects are slow for users.

Step 9: Keep the redirects and the old domain

Google gives two minimums. The site move guide's advice: "Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year." That lets Google transfer all signals to the new URLs, including links on other sites that point to the old ones, and for users' sake the guide suggests considering keeping redirects indefinitely. The Change of Address help says "Maintain the redirects for at least 180 days", and longer if Google Search still sends them traffic.

A year meets both. After the 180 days, Google treats the old site as unrelated to the new one if the old site is still there and crawlable, and the help page recommends paying for the old domain for at least a year, so others can't buy your abandoned domain and use it for malicious purposes. Keep the old URLs open to crawling meanwhile: Google counts a move complete only once Googlebot has visited every URL on both sites at least once.

What to expect after the move

  • A few weeks of change. For a small to medium-sized site, the site move guide says most pages can take a few weeks to move, and visibility in search may fluctuate meanwhile before rankings settle. The move happens URL by URL.

  • Heavier crawling. For a while, Google crawls the new site more than usual, because crawls of the old site are redirected to it on top of normal crawling; Google asks you to make sure the new site has the capacity.

  • Old addresses in results. After a domain move, Google's redirects guide says it will very likely keep showing old URLs occasionally, even once the new ones are indexed. That's normal and fades as people get used to the new domain.

  • Traffic changing places. Ideally, clicks in the old property's Performance report fall while the new property's rise.

To check a small blog's progress, search site:example.net with your new domain to see a sample of the pages Google knows there. Google's Page indexing help suggests such searches for sites with fewer than 500 pages, which it says probably don't need the full report; Google search operators explains what site: does and doesn't show. In the old property's Page indexing report, old URLs appear as Page with redirect: they aren't indexed themselves, because they redirect.

Also watch for an unusually high number of Not found (404) errors in Search Console: Google's site move guide says it frequently sees redirects pointing to wrong, non-existent URLs on the new site. If an important post still hasn't appeared at its new address after a few weeks, why Google hasn't indexed your page shows how to inspect it.

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