Search Console Change of Address: Step by Step

The Change of Address tool is one of the least used and most misunderstood buttons in Search Console. People reach for it when they switch to https, when they drop the www, or when they change hosting company. In none of those cases does it apply. And people forget it in the one case where it does: when the actual domain name changes.

What the Change of Address tool actually does

It’s a message to Google: “everything on old-example.com now lives on new-example.com.” With it, Google can process the move more confidently than from redirects alone. According to Google’s help page for the tool, the move is shown as in progress for 180 days, and during that window Google forwards signals from the old site to the new one. After 180 days Google no longer treats the two as related.

The tool does not replace the redirects. Without working 301s it won’t even let you submit. It’s an extra, explicit signal on top of the 301 redirects that do the real work.

When to use it, and when not

Two of these “No” rows are the subject of separate articles: the HTTPS migration and the www or non-www decision.

The requirements that cause most failures

Google lists them plainly, but they’re easy to miss.

Owner on both properties, same account

Being a “full user” is not enough. Many agencies have full access to the client’s old property and their own account as owner of the new one. The tool won’t match them. Ask the client to add the agency account as an owner, or do it from the client’s account.

Domain-level properties only

A URL-prefix property for https://example.com/ qualifies; one for https://example.com/shop/ does not. Domain properties (the DNS-verified kind) qualify too.

Every variant, separately

This is the one that surprises people. Submitting example.com doesn’t move www.example.com or shop.example.com. Google says to use the tool for every subdomain variant of the old domain, even ones you don’t actively use, and all of them must be verified. The tool does move all protocols of a property, so an http:// property also moves its https:// counterpart.

A working 301 from the old homepage

The pre-check samples a few pages. A homepage that returns 200, or a redirect that goes through a 302 first, fails the critical check.

Checking the redirects before you submit

Run this against the old homepage and two or three important URLs, for each host variant:

for host in old-example.com www.old-example.com; do
  curl -sI "https://$host/" | grep -iE "^(HTTP|location)"
done

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://new-example.com/
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://new-example.com/

If either host answers with a certificate error, curl prints nothing for it and exits with an error code. That’s a sign the old domain has no valid TLS certificate any more, which breaks the redirect for every visitor arriving via https. Fix that before anything else.

Walking through the tool

In the old property, open Settings and choose Change of address. Search Console lists the properties your account owns; pick the new domain. Then it validates.

Critical failures block the request. The usual ones are a missing redirect on the homepage or a target that isn’t verified. Non-critical failures show a warning, for example when a sampled page redirects to a URL that returns 404, and let you continue. Treat those as a to-do list anyway.

After submission, Search Console shows a banner on both properties for the 180 days. Submit the new sitemap in the new property. Keep the old sitemap around for a few days if you like, so Google crawls the old URLs and discovers the redirects quickly, then remove it.

What to watch after submitting

In the weeks after the move, the Performance report of the new property should show impressions rising while the old property’s numbers fall. Google says small and medium sites can take a few weeks for most pages to move, larger sites longer, and that rankings may fluctuate before they settle.

Two reports are worth checking weekly. In the old property’s Page indexing report, “Page with redirect” should grow until it covers nearly every URL. In the new property, look for pages Google has crawled but not indexed, which often points to thin pages that didn’t make it into the URL map or to canonicals that still name the old domain.

Expect more Googlebot traffic than usual on the new server during this period. Google mentions this in its site move guide; make sure rate limits or a firewall don’t start blocking it.

How long to keep the old domain

The tool’s 180 days are a minimum, not a deadline. Google’s help page says to keep redirects for at least 180 days, longer if old URLs still get Google Search traffic, and to keep the old domain registered for at least a year. The site move guidelines say a year for the redirects too.

I’d go further: keep the old domain for as long as backlinks point to it. Renewing a .com costs €14.99 a year at betadomain. Letting it lapse invites someone to register it, put up their own content and harvest the links you built, which is exactly the pattern Google describes as expired domain abuse.

Cancelling a move

If the move was a mistake, you have 180 days. Remove the redirects from old to new, add redirects from new back to old, then open the old property in the tool and click Cancel Move. With several variants you cancel each one. It’s possible, but the back-and-forth costs crawl time, so be sure before you submit.

For the full sequence around the tool, from URL mapping to monitoring, see the guide on changing domain without losing SEO. If you’re still picking the new name, the domain search on betadomain shows availability across endings, the price overview lists what each one renews at, and teams scripting migrations can automate registration via the registrar API.

Step by step

1. Set up 301 redirects firstRedirect the old homepage and ideally every old URL to its equivalent on the new domain with a permanent 301, in one hop.
2. Verify both domains in Search ConsoleAdd old and new domain as properties with the same Google account and make sure that account is an owner, not just a full user, on both.
3. Verify every variant of the old domainAdd URL-prefix properties or a domain property covering www, non-www and any subdomains such as shop. or blog., even unused ones.
4. Open the tool on the old propertyIn the old domain-level property go to Settings, then Change of address, and pick the new property from the list.
5. Validate and resolve critical errorsGoogle checks ownership and samples a few pages for 301s. Fix critical failures before continuing; warnings can be accepted.
6. Submit and repeat for each variantConfirm the move, then repeat it for each verified subdomain variant of the old domain.
7. Submit the new sitemap and monitorAdd the new sitemap to the new property, keep the redirects in place for at least a year and watch both properties' Performance reports.