Google has said a new design alone gives it no reason to rank a site lower. Sites drop when old addresses lead nowhere, when a setting meant for testing is left on, or when the pages that ranked lose their words. Here’s how to avoid each one, from Google’s own guides, and what we do at every launch.
By the NeuWP team · Updated 14 October 2026 · 7 minute read
the short answer:
every old address, a new page
permanent redirects
keep the words that rank
no noindex left on
send Google the sitemap
keep it all a year+
first
Why sites drop after a redesign
Usually for reasons nobody sees on the new pages.
In short: Google ranks pages at addresses. When the addresses, the words or the links change all at once, it has to learn the site again.
Asked whether a redesign costs rankings, Google’s John Mueller said there is nothing on Google’s side that lowers a site because it was redone. If the addresses, the content and the internal links all change, though, and the old addresses aren’t sent anywhere, Google has to treat the result as a new website. It starts again from what it can see today.
Ahrefs, which makes tools for search, lists the usual causes when traffic falls after a move:
Redirects that are missing, temporary when they should be permanent, or lost because the old server’s rules weren’t copied over.
Settings left over from testing: a robots.txt that blocks search engines, or pages marked “noindex”.
Content that was cut, rewritten or merged on the way to the new design.
Internal links that changed: the menu, the footer, related pages, the breadcrumbs.
Text drawn by a script that isn’t in the page until the script runs. Google runs scripts when it can, and not every search engine does.
Technical details: new titles, changed canonical tags, or an expired security certificate.
Every one of these can be checked before launch day. The rest of this guide is how.
weeks before
Before: list every address you have
The list decides how much of your traffic arrives at the new site.
In short: write down every address of the old site, decide where each one goes on the new site, and keep the words of the pages that bring you visitors.
1Collect the old addresses
Google suggests building the list from your sitemaps, your visitor numbers, your server’s logs and your website system’s own list of pages. Include the addresses of images and PDFs, if people find them. In Google Search Console, the report on your pages shows which addresses Google knows about.
2Give each one a new address
Write the old address and its new one side by side. Where you can keep an address exactly as it is, keep it: nothing has to move. Where two old pages become one, both can lead to it. Where a page is gone for good with nothing like it, it can end in a plain “not found”. Google says sending many old addresses to the home page can look like an error page to it, so give each one the page that matches it.
3Keep the words that rank
Look at which pages bring visitors from search: Search Console’s performance report shows them. A new design can give those pages a new look and keep their headings, their main text and their titles. If they need new words too, change them after the move has settled.
4Change one thing at a time
Google’s advice for a big move is to plan the changes one after the other: a new domain first, then a new layout, for example. A new design on the same domain is the gentler move. A new design, new addresses and a new domain on the same day is the hardest one for a search engine to follow.
the day itself
On launch day
Seven things, in this order.
In short: switch on the redirects, switch off what hid the test site, check it, and tell Google where the new sitemap is.
Turn on permanent redirects (301 or 308) from every old address to its new one. Google says these don’t lose a page’s value. A temporary redirect (302) keeps the old address in the results, and a redirect done by a script can be missed.
Remove what hid the test site. A “noindex” on the pages or a robots.txt that blocks everything is right while you build and wrong from the moment you launch.
Update your own links in menus, footers and texts, so they point straight at the new addresses instead of going through a redirect.
Check the certificate on every version of your address: with and without “www”. A broken one stops visitors before they see a page.
Open a dozen old addresses yourself, the ones that bring the most visitors first, and see where each one lands.
Send the new sitemap in Google Search Console, and add the site in Bing Webmaster Tools too. Remove the old sitemap once Google has the new one.
Keep the old site’s copy somewhere safe, in case you need to look up what a page said.
then
The weeks after
Some movement is normal. Watch it, and leave the redirects alone.
In short: expect the rankings to move for a few weeks, check Search Console every week, and keep the redirects for at least a year.
Google says to expect rankings to move while it moves a site, and that for a medium-sized website it can take a few weeks or more before the new addresses show in the results. Larger sites take longer.
In Search Console, watch the report on your pages for addresses that end in errors, and the performance report for the searches that brought you visitors before. If one page drops sharply, open its old address and see where it goes.
Keep the redirects for as long as you can. Google’s guide says generally at least a year, and longer helps people who saved an old link or printed it on a card.
only if it changes
If your domain changes too
From an old name to a new one, or from one country’s ending to another.
Google has a tool for this in Search Console, called Change of Address. It’s only for a move from one domain or subdomain to another, and only once the old home page has a permanent redirect to the new one. You need to own both in Search Console, under the same Google account. Google says to keep the redirects for at least 180 days, and longer while visitors still arrive through them.
Moving from “http” to “https”, or from an address with “www” to one without, isn’t a change of domain. Redirects alone do that.
Keep the old domain registered. If it expires, every redirect from it stops, and somebody else can buy it.
worth knowing
Speed and phones
A new site is a chance to be faster. It counts, though less than people think.
Google measures three things it calls Core Web Vitals: how soon the largest part of the page shows (good is within 2.5 seconds), how quickly the page answers a tap (under 200 milliseconds), and how much it jumps about while loading (a score under 0.1). Google says its ranking systems use them.
It also says it shows the most relevant page even when its experience is poor, and that chasing a perfect score for search alone may not be worth your time. A faster site helps most with the people on it: on a phone, on a slow connection, in a hurry.
our side
What we do at every launch
The same steps, for every site we build.
Your preview and the site we build are hidden from search engines until your launch, so neither competes with your current site. Your current site stays exactly as it is until then.
Before the launch, we read every address your old site’s sitemaps list and give each one its matching page on the new site, wherever there is one. On the day, your domain is pointed to the new site and each old address leads to its new page. Then we ask each old address again, at your own domain, and check where it arrives. We tell you that every old address leads to its new page only once every one of them has been checked. Your email isn’t touched.
After the launch, the new site has its own sitemap for search engines to read.
print it
The checklist
For your own move, or to ask whoever is doing it.
A list of every old address, with its new address beside it.
The pages that bring visitors from search keep their main words and titles.
Permanent redirects (301) from every old address, each to its matching page.
Pages that are gone for good end in “not found”, and only those.
No “noindex” and no blocking robots.txt left from testing.
Menus, footers and texts link to the new addresses directly.
The certificate works with and without “www”.
The new sitemap is sent in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Search Console is checked every week for the first months.
The redirects stay for at least a year, and the old domain stays registered.
