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Friday, June 06, 2014
Few topics confuse and scare webmasters more than site moves. To help you avoid surprises, we've
created an in-depth guide on how to handle site moves in a Googlebot-friendly way. So what,
exactly, is a site move and how do you go about moving a site correctly?
Basics of site moves
A site move is, broadly, one of two types of content migrations:
Site moves without URL changes:
Only the underlying infrastructure serving the website is changed without any visible changes to
the URL structure. For example, you might move www.example.com to a different hosting provider
while keeping the same URLs and site structure on www.example.com.
The protocol: https://www.example.com to https://www.example.com
The domain name: example.com to example.net
The URL paths: https://example.com/page.php?id=1 to https://example.com/widget
We've seen cases where webmasters implemented site moves incorrectly, or missed out steps that
would have greatly increased the chances of the site move completing successfully. To help
webmasters design and implement site moves correctly, we've updated the
site move guidelines. In parallel,
we continue to improve our crawling and indexing systems to detect and handle site moves if you
follow our guidelines.
Moving to responsive web design
A related increasingly-common question we're seeing is how can a website move from having separate
mobile URLs or dynamic serving to using responsive web design. Learn more about
responsive web design.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["Site moves involve changing a website's infrastructure or URLs, impacting how Googlebot crawls and indexes the site."],["Two primary types of site moves exist: moves without URL changes (e.g., changing hosting providers) and moves with URL changes (e.g., switching domains or paths)."],["Google provides guidelines for implementing site moves correctly to ensure a smooth transition and maintain search engine visibility."],["Webmasters should consult Google's resources on responsive web design for information on migrating from separate mobile URLs or dynamic serving."],["Google's Webmaster Help forums offer support and answers to additional questions regarding site moves and related topics."]]],[]]
