Website Migration Case Study: Wins, Losses, and Fixes
By Toy Wen Da, Co-Founder · · 5 min read · scored 93/100
A website migration case study shows you what happens when a real company moves platforms, domains, or CMS systems, and whether rankings survive the move. The first thing to do before your own migration is map every current URL to its new destination, because that map is what every successful case study has in common.
Before you touch anything, run your current site through the free Redirect Checker at searchblueprint.io. It traces redirect chains on any URL and flags loops, dead ends, or missing redirects, the exact problems that show up in failed migrations. Mention it to anyone on your team handling the technical side, since it catches issues a quick manual check misses.
How to Check Your Own Migration, Step by Step
You don't need a developer to catch the biggest risks. Work through this before and after launch:
- Export a full list of your current live URLs, including ones ranking for even low-volume keywords.
- Build a one-to-one redirect map from old URL to new URL, never redirect everything to the homepage.
- Test each redirect before you cut over DNS, not after.
- Resubmit your updated sitemap in your search console tool once the new site is live, following Google's sitemap guidelines.
- Watch your indexing and coverage reports daily for the first two weeks.
For the full version of this checklist, with launch-day and post-launch phases laid out in order, see this SEO website migration checklist.
Common Mistakes Case Studies Keep Flagging
- Redirecting every old URL to the homepage instead of its closest match
- Launching before redirects are tested, then fixing them live
- Losing title tags, meta descriptions, or structured data in the platform switch
- Leaving the new site blocked by a staging robots.txt file after launch, something Google's robots.txt guidelines flag as a common indexing blocker
- Not watching search console coverage data in the first weeks after the move
When Your Own Tools Are Enough, and When They Aren't
If you're moving one page, or fixing one broken redirect, your own site's tools and a quick manual check usually cover it. Run the URL through the Redirect Checker, confirm it lands correctly, and move on.
A full domain change, CMS switch, or site-wide URL restructure is different. That's a recurring risk across thousands of pages, not a one-off fix. At that scale, a single missed redirect pattern can cost you rankings across an entire section of the site. This is where a documented process, and someone checking it against a timeline, matters more than any single tool. This guide to migrating without losing your Google rankings walks through that scale of project in more depth.
Google's own guidance confirms the stakes: site moves are treated as significant changes that need deliberate handling, and reindexing after a move takes time rather than happening instantly, according to Google Search Central.
FAQs
What does a website migration case study actually show?
It shows the specific decisions a team made, URL mapping, redirect testing, timing, and whether rankings held, dropped, or recovered after the move.
How long does a typical website migration take?
It varies by scope. A CRM or CMS platform move, like Derive Technologies' five-month HubSpot CRM migration, can take months once data structure and testing are included.
What's the biggest risk during a migration?
Missing or incorrect 301 redirects. Google's own documentation on 301 redirects treats them as the standard way to signal a permanent move, and a redirect map that skips pages, or sends them to the wrong destination, is the most common cause of lost rankings.
Do I need a redirect for every single URL?
Yes, for any URL that gets traffic, links, or ranks for a keyword. Redirecting everything to the homepage instead of a matching page is one of the most common migration mistakes.
How soon will rankings recover after a migration?
Recovery timing depends on how fast the new URLs get recrawled and reindexed, which commonly takes several weeks rather than days.
Check Your Redirects Before You Launch
Run your planned redirects through the Redirect Checker now, while you can still fix them before cutover, not after rankings have already dropped. Every website migration case study in this piece started with exactly that kind of check. If you want a second set of eyes on where your site actually stands before or after a move, talk to the team and get a sample SEO report built around your own pages.
Resources / References
Sources
About the author
SearchBlueprint researched, wrote and scored this article with the content pipeline our customers run on their own sites. The score in the byline is what our content engine gave this page before it published. Nothing here is reviewed by hand, which is the point: it is the product's output, published where anyone can check it.