UK Publisher’s Search Visibility Plummets 98% After Domain Move

Art collage, Hands type on a laptop displaying a downward trend line with icons representing users. This scene captures the situation of decreasing online activity… — Image credit: Search Engine Journal

A United Kingdom news publisher experienced a 98 percent decline in search visibility for trending Google news queries following a migration from a .co.uk to a .com domain, NewzDash reported Tuesday.

The significant drop underscored the risks associated with major site migrations, particularly when involving news content heavily reliant on timely search exposure.

NewzDash, a search tracking firm, measured the visibility decline using its Search Visibility score, which monitors trending UK news queries across Google’s Top Stories and organic search results.

John Shehata, founder of NewzDash, noted that the publisher’s site had already been losing visibility during previous Google core updates and faced internal technical issues prior to the domain change.

The publisher moved its entire website overnight, aiming to consolidate its online presence into a single global domain and avoid being classified as a UK-only site by various advertising systems.

Shehata attributed the severe drop to Google potentially re-evaluating the site entirely, suggesting that hostname-based publication history and editorial trust might not have fully transferred during the migration.

Google’s official site-move guide advises against combining a domain migration with other significant changes, such as a content management system overhaul or a website redesign.

For large websites, Google also recommends transitioning in sections rather than moving the entire site simultaneously to mitigate potential issues.

Search engine analyst Roger Montti has previously highlighted the complexities of such migrations, emphasizing that Google’s systems may take time to fully understand and re-index a site under a new domain.

Google’s Search Relations team, including analyst John Mueller, has frequently cautioned publishers about the potential for temporary ranking fluctuations and visibility drops during domain changes, even when executed correctly.

The incident served as a reminder for news organizations to meticulously plan and execute domain migrations, adhering closely to search engine guidelines to preserve critical search visibility.

Source: Search Engine Journal