If you’re planning to move your website to a new domain — or you’re helping a client do it — Google just made things a little more strict. They’ve updated their official site migration guidelines, and if you miss what’s new, you could end up with ranking drops that are completely avoidable.

Let’s break it down.

What Is the Change of Address Tool?

Before we get into what changed, a quick recap for those who haven’t used this before.

Google’s Search Console Change of Address tool is specifically designed for domain migrations — when you’re moving your entire website from one domain to another. The tool tells Google: “Hey, we’ve moved. Please transfer the search rankings from the old domain to the new one.”

It’s important to know what this tool is not for. Google explicitly says don’t use it for:

• Switching from HTTP to HTTPS
• Changing your URL structure (like updating category paths)
• Moving between www and non-www versions of the same domain
• Changing web hosts or CDN providers when your URLs stay the same

If you’re doing any of the above, you don’t need this tool. It’s purely for actual domain-to-domain migrations.

What’s New in Google’s Updated Guidelines

Here’s the key change just added to Google’s documentation.

When migrating to a new domain, you now need to submit a Change of Address request for every variant of your old domain — not just the main one. That means:

• The www version (www.example.com)
• The non-www version (example.com)
• Any subdomains (en.example.com, blog.example.com, etc.)

And here’s the part people will miss — you need to do this even if those variants aren’t actively in use.

For example, if you’re moving from example.com to new-example.net, you should submit Change of Address requests for www.example.com, example.com, and any subdomains, even if you’ve never driven traffic to the www version.

One more critical requirement: all of these variants must be verified in Google Search Console before you can submit the requests.

Why Does Google Want This?

The reason is straightforward: domain migrations work best when all variants are migrated together.

Google might crawl one of those unused variants during or after the migration. If that variant isn’t accounted for in the Change of Address process, it can create search performance issues — confusing signals, diluted authority, or rankings that don’t transfer cleanly.

In short, those “unused” domain variants are not as invisible to Google as you might think.

What You Should Do Before Your Next Domain Migration

Here’s your quick action checklist:

1. Verify all domain variants in Search Console — www, non-www, and every subdomain of your old domain.
2. Set up 301 redirects from all those variants to the new domain.
3. Submit Change of Address requests for each variant through Search Console, not just the primary one.
4. Monitor Search Console after migration for any crawl errors or indexing issues.

The Bottom Line

This update isn’t massive, but it’s the kind of thing that catches people off guard during a migration. Most site owners only think about their “main” domain and forget the variants exist. Google is now explicitly telling you that those variants matter.

If you’re a web developer, SEO consultant, or digital marketer managing site migrations for clients, make this checklist part of your standard migration process. It’s a small step that can save a lot of headache later.