The new site is live and Google visits fall over the following days. Before blaming the design or “the Google algorithm”, check four things that explain most such cases. They run from what takes five minutes to what takes days.
First: is the drop real, and how big
Not every drop is a fault. Google’s documentation says even a correctly executed site move causes temporary ranking fluctuations, and for a medium-sized site the transition can take a few weeks or longer (Google Search Central).
So start with a comparison in Search Console’s performance report: take the period since launch and an equally long period before, with the same mix of weekdays. Look at clicks, not only impressions, and at the pages that had the most traffic. If everything falls, the cause is systemic. If ten pages fall, look for what they share: a URL type, a section or a template.
Cause 1: pages are blocked from indexing
If traffic vanishes on all pages right after launch, the first suspect is a test-environment setting that reached production. Check:
noindexin the page code (<meta name="robots" content="noindex">) or in theX-Robots-TagHTTP header. Google removes such a page from results even if other sites link to it (Google Search Central);robots.txtat/robots.txt. WithDisallow: /, Google may not crawl the site. A subtle point: a robots.txt block does not remove a page from the index and stops Google seeingnoindex, so do not mix the two (Google Search Central: robots.txt).
After the fix, request re-crawling of the key pages in Search Console’s URL inspection. Google acknowledges that without a request, revisiting a page can take months.
Cause 2: old URLs lead nowhere
If the new site has a different URL structure and old URLs return 404 or go to the home page, the value those pages had earned, with their external links, is lost. Google’s advice: redirect each old URL with a permanent redirect (301 or 308) to its new equivalent, not many to one unrelated page, and keep them at least a year (Google Search Central).
Check: take the ten oldest and most popular URLs (from Search Console or analytics), open each or check the response code. A 404 or an unrelated destination is the cause you found. The fix is a URL map and redirects, as in CMS migration without losing rankings. If the old site is gone, URLs can be recovered from Search Console, analytics, an archive copy or the old sitemap.
Cause 3: pages changed even though they look the same
Even with matching URLs, the search engine judges page content. Common differences after a rebuild:
- titles and descriptions replaced by a template or left empty; Google says titles should not be repeated or boilerplate, and rewrites them when they are outdated or do not match the content (Google Search Central);
- main text shortened or reworded;
- internal links lost or going through redirects;
- content that was in the HTML now loaded by JavaScript, which a crawler may not see (the URL inspection tool shows how Google sees the page).
If only a few pages dropped, compare their old and new versions word for word. Sometimes restoring the old title and first paragraph is enough.
If everything above is fine
If URLs, redirects, noindex and titles are right but traffic is still lower, there are two possible explanations:
- The transition is not over. A few weeks of fluctuation after a move are expected.
- Ranking or competition changed. If the drop coincides with a Google core update, it cannot be blamed on the migration alone. Check positions for your main queries and compare with competitors. Dates are on the Google Search Status Dashboard, referenced from Google’s core updates page.
At this stage there are no quick fixes; the work is content and speed. See Core Web Vitals and business impact.
Decision rule
- The whole site vanished at once: look for
noindexand robots.txt first. - Old URLs are falling: fix redirects.
- Individual pages are falling: compare old and new content.
- Everything is in order and the drop is small: wait and measure, without changing everything at once.
If you do not know where to start, tell us when the site launched and how large the drop is. As a web development studio (and online shop developer) we will review the code and redirects and say what to fix: discuss your project.
