Desk verdict
A migration succeeds when important old URLs resolve cleanly, measurement survives, and surprises are detected quickly.
01
Before launch
Freeze an inventory of indexable URLs, traffic-bearing landing pages, backlinks, canonicals, titles, structured data, and analytics behavior.
- Approve a one-to-one redirect map
- Crawl staging behind access control
- Verify production DNS and certificates
- Name the rollback owner
02
At launch
Test representative URLs across every template and redirect rule. Confirm that production navigation, canonicals, robots rules, sitemaps, and measurement all reference the final hostname.
03
After launch
Monitor server errors, redirect chains, index coverage, Search Console signals, and revenue-critical landing pages. Triage by business consequence, not by raw error count.
End note
This field note is a decision aid, not a universal ranking rule. Verify the conditions on your own site.