Domain migrations scare the living lights out of me, and they should scare you too.
Why? Because I’ve watched perfectly healthy sites get absolutely demolished by botched migrations. Traffic drops 90%. Rankings vanish. Revenue craters. And the worst part? Sometimes it takes months, or even years, to crawl back to where you started.
Recovery time isn’t some mysterious black box. There’s real data on this stuff, and it’s both better and worse than you might think.
What the Data Says About Recovery Times
Let me hit you with some numbers that’ll make your stomach churn.
A study from Search Engine Journal tracked domain migrations and found some brutal truths:
- On average, it took 229 days for third-party tools to even start reflecting organic traffic for the new domain
- It took 523 days on average for sites to match their old domain’s traffic levels
- 17% of migrations never recovered their original traffic, even after 1,000+ days
Christ.
But before you cancel your migration plans, here’s the flip side: the fastest recoveries happened in 19, 22, 23, and 33 days. So it’s not all doom and gloom.
For local businesses? I’ve seen plumbers recover their “emergency plumber near me” rankings in 3 weeks. I’ve also seen dentists lose half their neighborhood visibility for 6 months. The difference? Execution. And frankly, knowing what the hell you’re doing.
Why Some Sites Bounce Back Fast
I’ve seen two nearly identical sites migrate, and one recovers in a month while the other is still bleeding traffic six months later. Here’s why recovery times vary so wildly:
Site size matters. A 500-page local business site? You might see recovery in 30-60 days. A 1.4 million page e-commerce monster? Buckle up for a longer ride. Google has to re-crawl and re-index every single page, and that takes time.
Local sites have unique challenges. Your Google Business Profile, local citations, neighborhood-specific content… all that hyperlocal stuff needs updating. Miss one directory and watch your “near me” traffic vanish.
You’re not just changing domains, are you? Most migrations aren’t clean domain swaps. You’re probably also:
- Restructuring your site architecture
- Updating URL structures
- Changing content during the move
- Migrating to a new CMS
Each change adds complexity. Each complexity adds recovery time.
Google’s indexing process is page-by-page. It’s not like flipping a switch. Google discovers your redirects, follows them, evaluates the new pages, and slowly rebuilds its understanding of your site. For massive sites, this can take months.
And here’s something most people don’t think about: backlink profile transfer. If your old domain has links from the local Chamber of Commerce, neighborhood blogs, and city directories, Google needs time to crawl all those external sites, discover the redirects, and pass the link equity. The more extensive your local backlink profile, the longer this process takes.
The Pre-Migration Audit That’ll Save Your Ass
Most migration disasters start before the migration even begins. You’re moving a broken site to a new domain and expecting different results. Doesn’t work that way.
Before you touch anything:
Audit every URL. I use Google Sheets with the httpstatuscode() function to check status codes across the entire site. Find your 404s now, not after the migration when you’re panicking about traffic drops.
Fix broken internal links. Use Screaming Frog or Xenu to crawl your site and identify broken internal links. These become exponentially more problematic after a migration.
Analyze your backlink profile. Tools like Majestic will show you which external sites link to pages that return 404s. Get these fixed or redirected properly before you migrate.
Map your local content. Every “areas we serve” page, every neighborhood guide, every location-specific service page needs a migration plan. I once watched a roofer lose all their suburb-specific rankings because they consolidated 20 neighborhood pages into one during migration. Took 4 months to recover.
Here’s something I learned the hard way: if your new domain has zero authority, publish some content there first. Google needs signals that this new domain is legitimate and ready to inherit your old domain’s authority.
Migration Execution: The Technical Stuff That Matters
I’m not going to bore you with a 47-step checklist, but here’s what moves the needle:
301 redirects are non-negotiable. Every old URL needs to redirect to the most relevant new URL. And here’s a mistake I see constantly: forgetting to transfer previous redirects from the original site. Your new redirects need to account for the entire redirect chain.
Tell Google immediately. Use the Change of Address Tool in Google Search Console. This isn’t optional; it’s how you formally notify Google about the move. Submit your change of address request as soon as the redirects are live.
Update every Google entity. Knowledge Panels, Google Business Profiles, local citations… everything needs to reflect the new domain. I once worked with an automotive parts company that had 800+ Google Business Profiles to update. Took forever, but their recovery time was about 60 days for a 600,000-page site.
Don’t forget the local ecosystem. Your domain appears in places you’ve forgotten about. Yelp, Facebook, Nextdoor, local newspapers, high school sponsorship pages, that one blog post from 2019 about the charity 5K you sponsored. Every mention matters for local visibility.
Keep the old domain alive. Don’t let it expire. Don’t let some domain squatter buy it and fill it with spam. Keep those redirects running for at least a year, preferably longer.
What to Watch During Recovery
Recovery isn’t binary; you don’t go from zero to hero overnight. You need to monitor specific metrics to understand how the migration is progressing.
I check these daily during the critical first few weeks:
Organic traffic year-over-year is your north star metric. Don’t get caught up in day-to-day fluctuations. Look at longer trends.
Local pack rankings tell you if Google still trusts your business for neighborhood searches. These often tank harder than regular organic rankings during migrations.
Brand vs. non-brand queries tell different stories. Brand traffic usually recovers faster because Google trusts the connection between your brand and the new domain. Non-brand queries take longer because Google needs to rebuild topical authority associations.
“Near me” and location-specific searches need special attention. A pizza shop I worked with recovered their general “pizza delivery” rankings in 40 days but took 90 days to get back their “pizza delivery downtown” rankings.
Impressions and clicks in Search Console often recover before third-party tools show improvement. This data is straight from Google, so it’s your earliest indicator of recovery.
Goal completions and conversion rates matter too. Sometimes traffic recovers but conversion rates stay depressed because the user experience changed during migration.
Managing Expectations
Migrations are inherently chaotic. Even perfectly executed migrations see temporary traffic drops of 70-80%. That’s normal. Frustrating, but normal.
I worked with a chain of urgent care centers last year. 50 locations, complex local SEO setup, the works. We managed every technical detail, ran concurrent local campaigns, and still saw massive traffic drops in week one. But by day 30, they were back to baseline. By day 60, they were exceeding pre-migration traffic.
The difference? We set expectations upfront, monitored obsessively, and fixed issues immediately as they appeared.
For local businesses, recovery often happens in stages:
- Week 1-2: Brand searches come back
- Week 3-4: Generic service searches start recovering
- Week 5-8: Location-specific and “near me” searches return
- Week 9-12: Long-tail neighborhood searches fully recover
The Reality Check
Most sites I’ve worked with see meaningful recovery between 30-90 days if the migration is executed properly. But “properly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
Local businesses often recover faster than massive e-commerce sites, but they’re also more vulnerable to oversights. Forget to update your Google Business Profile? Say goodbye to map pack rankings. Miss a local citation? Watch competitors steal your neighborhood traffic.
You can’t wing a domain migration. You can’t “set it and forget it.” You need technical expertise, obsessive attention to detail, and the stomach to watch your traffic tank while you wait for Google to catch up.
If that sounds overwhelming, it should. Domain migrations are complex technical projects that can make or break your online business. The companies that recover quickly invest in proper planning, meticulous execution, and expert guidance throughout the process.
Because here’s the thing about domain migrations: you only get one shot to do it right. Mess it up, and you might be looking at those 500+ day recovery times… if you recover at all.