Domain Migration Guide — How We Changed Our Website’s Address

Changing the primary domain of a running website is a little like moving house: you want everything to work at the new address, and you don’t want to lose any friends (or search traffic) along the way. Here’s how we did it, what went smoothly, and what nearly tripped us up.

Why Change Domains?

For us, the new domain was shorter, more memorable, and better fit our brand. But we also knew that a domain migration, if done carelessly, could break logins, kill ad revenue, and tank our search rankings.

For details on why we changed domains, see our 2025 Domain Migration — Moving to tink.ink post.

Step 1: Preparing the New Domain

We started by buying the new domain and setting up DNS records. This part is mostly routine: point the domain to your server, set up SSL, and make sure the site loads securely. What’s less obvious is that you need to update your website’s own configuration—hardcoded URLs, canonical tags, sitemaps, and any place the old domain appears. We did a search across our codebase and content to catch them all.

Once the new domain was live, we tested it quietly. We didn’t announce it or link to it yet, but we made sure every page loaded, images and scripts worked, and the site felt identical to the old one.

If you need more time to prepare, consider putting a robots.txt file on the new domain to block search engines from indexing it until you’re ready. This way, you can avoid duplicate content issues and ensure that only the final version gets crawled.

Step 2: Updating Third-Party Services

This is where things get fiddly. Many services—Google AdSense, Analytics, Search Console, and others—care deeply about your domain. We added or updated the new domain to each service, verified ownership, and checked for any domain-specific settings.

Here are some examples:

For AdSense, we had to wait for approval before ads would show.
For Analytics, we made sure data was flowing for the new hostname.

Some services, like OAuth providers or email senders, required us to update callback URLs or DNS records. We kept a running list and double-checked each integration.

Step 3: Redirects and the Big Switch

With the new domain ready and third-party services updated, it was time for the main event: redirecting all traffic from the old domain to the new one.

We set up 301 redirects at our DNS & CDN service provider (Cloudflare), if you don’t have that option, do it at the server level.

Make sure every old URL points to its exact new counterpart. This is crucial for SEO—search engines need to see a clear, permanent move.

We also updated our sitemap and robots.txt, and made sure canonical tags on every page referenced the new domain.

Then we flipped the switch. For a few minutes, we watched logs nervously, but everything worked: users landed on the new site, and search engines started to follow.

Step 4: Telling Google (and Others)

After the switch, we went into Google Search Console and used the “Change of Address” tool.

This step tells Google that the whole site has moved, and helps transfer search signals.

We submitted the new sitemap and checked that Googlebot could crawl the new URLs without issue.

But we encountered an issue: Google Search Console initially showed error on the Change of Address request. We spent some time troubleshooting, checking that the 301 redirects were correctly in place and that both domains were verified in Search Console, but nothing obvious was wrong. After a day, the error cleared up on its own, and the request went through.

If you have the same issue, you can just try more times or try later. Some users have reported that the error as well at https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/16201094/couldn’t-fetch-the-page-getting-error-on-change-of-address?hl=en.

Summary and Tips

Prepare the new domain fully before touching the old one.
Update every integration you can think of—ads, analytics, email, APIs—before the switch.
Use 301 redirects, not JavaScript or meta refreshes.
Don’t rush: keep the old domain’s redirects in place for at least a year.

A domain migration is never completely stress-free, but with careful prep and a bit of patience, it can be almost boring—which is exactly what you want.