It’s possible your migration issues may be due to site quality

There have been a number of reports recently of sites struggling to be properly indexed following a site migration.

I have consulted with a few sites on this issue and have developed a theory.

Please know that this theory is not something I can prove at this point. I am writing this blog post to generate discussion.

My theory: A site migration triggers a quality review

I believe that not only does a site migration trigger a new review of site quality from Google, but also, that Google’s standards for site quality have become much more strict.

Let me share a case I recently investigated.

An example of a site that Google will not index post migration

I was hired to do a site quality review for a site that blogs on a hobby topic. The site had previously performed well and was starting to see a slow decline over the last year or so. Just before I started my review, the site owner reached out to tell me that they had just started migrating to a new domain.

From what I can see they did everything correctly. They submitted the change of address in Google Search Console, carefully mapped redirects, updated internal links, ensured Google could crawl the new site, and generated a sitemap for the new domain.

In the Page Indexing Report, 98% of their urls were reported as not indexed.

Even worse, inspecting any page, including those 33 pages that Google said were indexed showed the same thing. The page was indeed not indexed. Google had classified it as “crawled - currently not indexed.”

There wasn’t a problem with Google finding the new page. Rather, they had crawled it and chosen not to index it.

We ran a live test in GSC on several of these pages. In each case the report told us the page was available to be indexing, but only if certain conditions were met.

That link points to this page in which Google tells us the page might not get indexed if it is subject to a manual action or a duplicate of another page. Neither of these were the case. We wondered if the site migration caused duplication issues. But Google clearly recognized the canonical as this new site and the old page was properly redirecting to it.

However, Google lists a third possible reason for not indexing a valid page: The page quality must be high enough to warrant indexing.

What were the quality issues?

In my review for this site I noted that while the site was well written and thorough, there was very little original value on any page compared to what already exists on other sites on the web.

They were all commodity content - content that is essentially the same across other sites on the internet.

Google recently updated their documentation on creating helpful content to include new information on the “main content” of your webpage. The main content is the part of the page that helps fulfil the searcher’s need. In it, they emphasized the importance of:

• Effort
• Originality
• Talent or skill
• Accuracy

That point on originality is what I think matters most here. Google describes it as “The extent to which the content offers unique, original information or perspectives that aren’t already available on other websites.”

Why wasn’t the old site impacted then?

This is the obvious question! Why was the quality acceptable on the old domain and suddenly deemed low quality after the migration?

I think that if Google applied these quality standards across the board to every site on the internet, the vast majority of websites would suffer catastrophic loss. Who knows, it is possible we will see this with a future core update.

My theory is that when the site I reviewed migrated to a new domain, this triggered a more strict quality assessment. Given that none of the pages offered information that truly was original and offered more than what is already available on other websites, Google’s systems decided not to index it.

What should you do?

If you cannot get indexed following a site migration, first you should thoroughly review for technical reasons. Ensure you have properly redirected old pages to new. Make sure you record the change of address in Google Search Console. Use the Live Test in GSC to verify that Google can see the content on these pages. It is a good idea to connect with an SEO who can thoroughly investigate technical issues.

It’s also worth knowing that site migrations can take time for Google to process. It is possible you just need to wait for longer. In the case I mentioned above, however, it has been four months now and only the homepage is indexed. There is definitely something wrong.

If it is indeed an issue with site quality, then I would suggest producing a small handful of truly original and insightful articles. For many sites this requires a whole new business direction. It’s no longer good enough to write about things the world already knows. You need to find things you can create that bring something new to the internet that people will find of value.

What I don’t know, however, is whether Google will consider the value of these individual pages or whether your overall site quality score, diminished because of unoriginal content, will hinder indexing of these pages as well.

Another option to consider is to start completely over on a new domain with brand new content. I realize this is not the answer you are looking for. However, if my theory is right, then there is no technical SEO fix for many of these sites that are struggling to get their new domain indexed.

I’d go through each of the previously top performing pages on your site and use this prompt in your LLM of choice:

“I would like to create a new version of this page that contains information that is truly original compared to what already exists on the internet. My goal is for it to provide helpful information or functionality that searchers cannot find anywhere else. Brainstorm with me, helping me find ways to draw from my experience and knowledge to produce something that searchers are likely to find more helpful than what currently exists.”

If you liked this, you'll love my newsletter:

Or, join us in the Search Bar for up to the minute news on Search and AI.