Google may refuse to index pages after a site move
One well known SEO thinks moving domains triggers a stricter quality check on your pages.
Sites that move to a new web address are struggling to get indexed, and one well known SEO thinks she knows why. Marie Haynes posted that she is seeing more and more reports of this happening after a migration, and her theory is that it comes down to overall site quality. This follows earlier reports of migrations going wrong.
Indexing means being listed in Google at all. If a page is not indexed, it cannot rank for anything, no matter how good it is. A migration is when you move your site to a new domain name, for example after a rebrand.
Her theory
Haynes points to Google's own documentation, which says a valid page may not be indexed if there are page quality issues. Her reading is that the move itself is what sets off the stricter look. In other words, the pages may have had the same problems before, but Google was not re-examining them until the address changed.
What this means if you are planning a move
This is one SEO's theory, not a confirmed Google statement. Nothing here says a migration will go wrong. But if you are about to move domains, the practical takeaway is that a move is not a purely technical job. The pages landing on the new address get looked at again.
Haynes frames the test as whether pages offer truly original and insightful information or functionality that does not already exist on the internet. That is a high bar for a page that just restates what ten other sites say. A page about your own work, your own prices, your own customers and your own area clears it more easily than a generic explainer.
What to do
If you are planning a domain move, go through your pages first and cut or rewrite the ones that say nothing another site does not already say. If you have already moved and traffic has not come back, open Search Console, click Pages, and look at the list of pages Google has not indexed. That report tells you whether this is your problem before you start guessing at anything else.
I think it's possible that a site migration triggers a much more strict evaluation of whether pages offer truly original and insightful information
Be the person who already knew
One email a day. Under three minutes. You will hear about a Google change before it shows up in your traffic.