How do I move my website to a new host without losing Google traffic?

Let us imagine a bakery owner in Victoria. The website works, the address is the same one printed on the boxes, but the hosting company has become slow and expensive, and a better offer has arrived. The owner has one worry, and it is a sensible one: if I move the website, will Google forget me?

The truth is that this is the gentlest type of move a website can make. The address stays the same, the pages stay the same, and only the computer that serves them changes. Google has a page written exactly for this case, called "Changing your web hosting and SEO", and it divides the work into four stages: prepare the new hosting, change the DNS settings, watch the traffic move, and shut down the old hosting. Let us go through them one by one, in plain words.

What actually changes when you move to a new host?

Your website lives on a computer somewhere, rented from a hosting company. People reach it by typing your address, and something has to tell their browser which computer to ask. That something is DNS.

ICANN, the organization that coordinates web addresses worldwide, explains it well. Computers find each other with numbers, and people are bad at remembering numbers, so "the DNS uses letters rather than numbers, and then links a precise series of letters with a precise series of numbers." Your address is the letters. The server at your hosting company is the numbers. ICANN adds a detail that matters for us: "the link between a particular domain and a particular IP address can be changed quickly and easily."

So moving host means two things. You copy the website to the new computer. Then you change the link in DNS so your address points to the new computer instead of the old one. Google calls this a site move "without URL changes", and it treats it differently from a move to a new domain name, which is a larger job.

What should you do a week before the move?

Here is the step almost everyone forgets, because it must happen early.

Computers around the world do not ask DNS for your address every single time. They remember the answer for a period, and the length of that period is a setting in your DNS records called TTL (time to live). If the TTL is long, some visitors will keep reaching the old server for longer after you switch.

Google's advice is direct: "Consider lowering the TTL to a conservative low value (for example, a few hours) at least a week in advance of the move to refresh DNS caches faster." You change this in the account where your DNS records are managed, which is often your domain registrar and sometimes your old hosting company. If you do not know where that is, ask your current host before you tell them you are leaving.

How do you prepare and test the new hosting?

Now the copying. Upload a full copy of your site to the new host, and then look at it with care before any visitor can see it. Google suggests testing first in a private environment, and then, if you want a public test, using a temporary address such as beta.example.com. If that test copy is public, add a noindex rule (an instruction that asks search engines to leave the page out of results) so Google does not list the test copy as a second website.

Three checks come from Google's page and are easy to miss.

The first: can Google reach the new server? Google recommends checking this with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. It also warns that firewalls and protection against floods of traffic on the new host can block Googlebot, the program Google uses to read websites. Ask the new host whether such protection is active, and run the URL Inspection check before you change anything in DNS.

The second: will your Search Console access survive? If you proved ownership by uploading an HTML file to your site, Google reminds you to "include your current verification file in your new copy of the site." Naturally, if the file stays behind on the old server, the proof of ownership stays behind too.

The third concerns your email, which Google's page does not cover but which every owner should ask about. Your DNS records also hold the settings that deliver your email. When you change DNS, make sure the email settings are copied exactly, or ask the new host to confirm them line by line.

How do you make the switch?

When the new copy works and the TTL has been low for a week, the move itself is short.

1. Remove any temporary blocks you added for testing, such as the noindex rule or a robots.txt file that told crawlers to stay away.
2. Change the DNS records so your address points to the new hosting company.
3. Leave the old hosting running, with the same content, exactly as it was.

That third step deserves its own section.

Why keep the old host running after the move?

Because computers around the world do not all update at the same moment. Even with a short TTL, some computers remember the old answer for a while, and during that time a few visitors, and possibly Googlebot, will still arrive at the old server. If the old server is empty, they find nothing.

Google's rule for when to stop is clear and needs no guessing: "Check the server logs on the old provider and, once the traffic to the old provider reaches zero, you can shut down your old hosting infrastructure." Server logs are the records a server keeps of every visit, and any hosting company can show them to you. So do not cancel the old account on the day of the move. Cancel it when its logs are silent.

What should you watch in Search Console afterwards?

Here Google says something that calms many owners, if they read it before they panic. "When you change hosting infrastructure, it's normal to see a temporary drop in Googlebot's crawl rate immediately after the launch, followed by a steady increase over the next few days, potentially to rates that may be higher than before the move." Google explains why: it decides how fast to read a site from many signals, and those signals change when the hosting changes.

So what do you look at? Google's hosting page suggests watching the indexing graphs in Search Console. The Crawl Stats report is also useful here. You find it by clicking Settings, then Crawl stats, and Google describes it as showing "how many requests were made and when, what your server response was, and any availability issues encountered." It also shows host status, with separate checks for DNS and for connecting to the server. One limit: Google says the report is "available only for root-level properties", such as a domain property for example.com.

Google also suggests two simple checks in the first days. Look at the server logs on both the old and the new hosting, so you can see visits move from one to the other. And use a public DNS checking website, which asks DNS servers in many countries where your address points, to confirm that the new answer has reached them. When both checks agree, the move is complete for your visitors. For Google, the indexing graphs show the same thing in the days that follow.

If you have not set up Search Console yet, set it up before the move, so you have a record of how things looked before the switch. Our Search Console guide for small businesses explains the setup step by step.

When is a hosting move more than a hosting move?

Sometimes the owner decides, while moving host, to change a few other things too. A new design. New page addresses. Perhaps a new domain name. At that point the job changes category. Google's separate guide on site moves with URL changes recommends permanent redirects, and says to keep them "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year." It also warns that "the visibility of your content in Search may fluctuate temporarily during the move."

Our advice is to do one thing at a time. Move the host first, with every address unchanged. Wait until the old server is silent and Search Console looks normal. Only then start the redesign, following a plan such as our SEO checklist for a website redesign. Two changes at once make it impossible to know which one caused a problem.

And if your physical address is changing too, that is a separate list of tasks for Google Business Profile and the directories, covered in moving your business to a new address.

How can Licheo help?

Licheo does the website, search and AI work that big companies pay whole teams for, done for your small business, including hosting moves done in the order Google describes. Before any move, it helps to know how your domain is set up today. The free Get Found Check reads your homepage, your domain's DNS records and your security certificate, and returns a grade in under 60 seconds.

Sources

1. Changing Your Web Hosting and SEO, Google Search Central, last updated 10 December 2025, accessed 29 September 2026.
2. What Does ICANN Do?, ICANN, accessed 29 September 2026.
3. Crawl Stats report, Search Console Help, Google, accessed 29 September 2026.
4. Site Moves and Migrations, Google Search Central, last updated 20 August 2026, accessed 29 September 2026.
5. Change of Address tool, Search Console Help, Google, accessed 29 September 2026.