Google describes the internal process for site migration

John Mueller of Google has answered a question on site migration. He has answered a question about how Google processes a site move which can trigger the “sandbox effect”. Mueller has offered a highly detailed response about how Google deals with site migration.

There is simply an old idea from the early 2000s that Google will hold back sites from the ranking. Further, it will put it into a sandbox until it knows the site that it can trust.

Google has denied that there is a sandbox. But the idea of sandboxing continues today even after fifteen years. The person who has asked the question had concerns about the sandbox effect that is happening to them with site migration.

The person wanted to know what is the best way to move a site. John Mueller started his answer with the confirmation that there is no sandbox during a site movement.

To him, it sounds more like a traditional site movie situation. As you move from one domain to another and you redirect the URLs from your old site to a new one, you have to deal with it. From his point of view, there is no sandbox effect. There is no definition of sandbox effect on our side when it comes to a site movement.

John Mueller further addressed the question of whether they should move the site in phase or just do it at once. Hence he answered that if you have to move a site, then move a site and redirect all your pages.

He further described how the system of Google takes note of the site movement and speeds up the site processing rather than slowing it down. As a site starts redirecting all pages to a different website, then it will reprocess it a bit fast. It will help to process the site movement quite quickly.

His explanation of how Google responds to the site moves makes much sense. It is much of a rational response for designing a system to recognize a site movement. Google can further continue to refer sites to pages that are useful to users.