Google’s John Mueller provided insight into why domain name migrations between multiple language versions of the same website turned out very differently even though the same process was followed for each of the three websites.
Migration to different domain names
The person who asked the question maintained three websites under three different country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). The ccTLDs were .fr (France), .be (Belgium) and .de (Germany). The project was a migration from one domain name to another domain name, each within its respective ccTLD, such as example-1.fr to example-2.fr.
Each site had the same content but in different languages that corresponded to the target countries of each of their respective ccTLDs. So, since everything about the migration was the same, the reasonable expectation was that the outcome of the migration would be the same for each site.
But it wasn’t the case.
Two of the three site migrations failed and lost traffic. Only one of them experienced a seamless transition.
What went wrong?
The person who asked for information about what went wrong tweeted:
“Hi @JohnMu,
AlicesGarden (.fr, .be, .de …) has migrated to Sweek (.fr, .be, .de …)
.FR and .BE lost a lot of traffic on October 23rd
Other TLDs worked fine.
Redirects, canonicals, hreflang, content, offer = OK
Search Console Migration = OK
What else could be wrong?”
Original Tweet:
Hello @JohnMu,
AlicesGarden (.fr, .be, .de …) has migrated to Sweek (.fr, .be, .de …)
.FR and .BE lost a lot of traffic on October 23rd
Other TLDs worked fine.
Redirects, canonicals, hreflang, content, offer = OK
Search Console Migration = OK
What else could be wrong? pic.twitter.com/95qRoaZzbL
— Quentin Adt (@Quentin_Adt) April 16, 2024
John Mueller tweets his response
Google’s John Mueller responded that each site is a different site and should be treated differently even if they share the same content assets (in different languages) with each other.
Mueller tweeted:
“I don’t know about your sites, but even if the content is the same, they are essentially different sites (especially with ccTLDs), so it would be normal for a migration to affect them differently (and this seems like a good way back in the meantime).”
Here’s his tweet:
I don’t know about your sites, but even if the content is the same, they are essentially different sites (especially with ccTLDs), so it would be normal for a migration to affect them differently (and this seems to be a way back). In the meantime).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 23, 2024
Are site migrations essentially the same?
John makes an important observation. The way a site fits into the Internet can be affected by a site migration, especially how users may respond to a template or domain name change. I have done domain name migrations and these have been fine with a slight temporary drop. But that was just one domain name at a time, not multiple domains.
What could be going on?
Someone in this discussion he tweeted to ask if they had used AI content.
The person who asked the original question tweeted their response:
“Yes, some AI for a short description, mostly on category pages, but nothing that could be misleading from an end-user perspective.”
Could it be that both site migrations failed and a third succeeded because they coincidentally overlapped with an upgrade? Given that the scope of the AI content was trivial, it’s probably unlikely.
The important thing is what Mueller said, that they are all different places and therefore the outcome should be different.
Featured image by Shutterstock/William Barton
