How To Identify Migration Issues Quickly Using AI via @sejournal, @makhyan

Site migration issues happen. You plan, create a staging site, and then when the site goes live, there’s bound to be something wrong.

Quality assurance gets thrust into overdrive the moment that migrations are complete.

You sift through thousands of pages, metadata, and more to fix any problems before someone else notices.

It’s a lot of work and time-consuming to feel confident that a site migration is complete without issues.

But, I’m going to show you how to identify migration issues quickly using Google Sheets and AI. You still have a lot to do (migration experts, rejoice!), but this script is going to help you:

• Compare old and new ScreamingFrog crawls.
• Identify immediate issues that you need to resolve.

SEOs have their own strategies and practices that they follow, and this script is going to allow you to QA migrations quickly based on your own requirements.

You can adapt the script below to make this work for you, whether you’re working on a small local business site or an enterprise.

Setting Everything Up With Screaming Frog And Google Sheets

I’m using Screaming Frog for this example because it makes it easy for me to export data for both sites.

We’re going to assume the following:

1. Your first version is your live website, which we’ll call the Old Crawl.
2. Your second version is your new site on a staging environment, which we’ll call New Crawl.

You’re going to create a Google Sheets with the following Sheets:

• Overview.
• Old Crawl.
• New Crawl.

Once your Sheet is set up properly, run your ScreamingFrog scan using any settings that you like.

You’ll run the scan for your Old and New Crawl and then inmport the data to the Old Crawl and New Crawl tabs in your Sheets.

Your sheets will look something like this:

ScreamingFrog Export Crawl Results (Screenshot of Google Sheet, March 2025)

The New Crawl will look very similar.

Once you fill in both the New and Old Crawl sheets, you’ll need to populate your Overview sheet.

The table that you create in this sheet should contain the following columns:

• Existing (old) URL.
• New URL.
• Status Code.
• Indexability.
• Title 1.
• Meta Description 1.
• H1-1.
• H2-1.
• Column 3.
• Column 4.

Your Overview sheet will look something like this:

Migration QA Overview Sheet (Screenshot of Google Sheet, March 2025)

Once you have your sheets set up, it’s time to put your favorite AI to work to compare your data.

I used ChatGPT, but you can use any AI you like. I’m sure Claude, Deepseek, or Gemini would do equally as well as long as you use similar prompts.

Prompts To Create Your Google Sheets Data

You can fill in your Google Sheet formulas by hand if you’re a formula guru, but it’s easier to let AI do it for you since we’re making basic comparisons.

Remember, the Old Crawl is the live site, and the New Crawl is my staging site.

Now, go to your AI tool and prompt it with the following:

I need a Google Sheets formula that compares values between two sheets: "Old Crawl" and "New Crawl." The formula should:
Look up a value in column A of "Old Crawl" using the value in column A of the current sheet.
Look up a value in column A of "New Crawl" using the value in column B of the current sheet.
Find the corresponding column in both sheets by matching the column header in row 1 with the current column header.
If the values match, return "Pass".
If they don't match, return "Error (old<>new)" with the differing values shown.
Use TEXTJOIN("<>", TRUE, ...) to format the error message.
Ensure compatibility with Google Sheets by specifying explicit ranges instead of full-column references.

You can adjust these prompt points on your own.

For example, you can change “Old Crawl” to “Live Site,” but be sure that the sheet names match up properly.

ChatGPT generated code for me that looks something like this:

=IF(
INDEX('Old Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($A2, 'Old Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'Old Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)) =
INDEX('New Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($B2, 'New Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'New Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)),
"Pass",
"Error (" & TEXTJOIN("<>", TRUE,
IFERROR(INDEX('Old Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($A2, 'Old Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'Old Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)), ""),
IFERROR(INDEX('New Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($B2, 'New Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'New Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)), "")
) & ")"
)

You can use these basic formulas to start comparing rows by pasting the formula in row 2.

Adding the formula is as simple as double-clicking the field and pasting it in.

I know that you’ll want to make this a little more complex. You can do a lot of things with Google Sheets and formulas, so tweak things as needed.

Ideas For Expanding Your Migration Sheet

Your formulas will depend on the settings of your Screaming Frog crawl, but here are a few that I think will work well:

• Create a function to compare all of the status codes between the Old Crawl and New Crawl to identify key issues that exist. For example, if a page has anything but a 200 code, you can highlight the issue to fix it quickly.
• Add a formula to highlight metadata that is too long or short, so that you can add it to your task list for when the audit is over.
• Create a function to monitor Response Time between both the Old and New Crawl so that you can identify any issues that the new crawl may have or report speed increases if switching to a new host or server.
• Create another function to compare the URL structure of each URL. You might compare trailing slashes, structure and more.
• Develop a new function for Inlinks to be sure that no internal links were lost in the migration. You can also check external links using the same concept.

Migrating a site is always tedious.

A lot of QA goes into the process, and while necessary, the concept above will make the process much easier.

You can also use AI to recommend further enhancements to your newly migrated site.

How would you improve this file or its functionality?

More Resources:

Featured Image: TarikVision/Shutterstock

A Guide To Enterprise-Level Migrations (100k + URLs) via @sejournal, @TaylorDanRW

An enterprise website migration is no small feat.

We’re talking hundreds of thousands of URLs and years of SEO equity on the line.

To pull it off without traffic loss, you need a solid redirect strategy.

With the right approach, you can migrate an enterprise website without losing traffic or search rankings.

If you stay organized, leverage tools to scale, and pay attention to details, you will have done everything you can to ensure business continuity in the short, medium, and long term pertaining to organic performance.

Aside from the technical aspects of migration, an enterprise migration, more often than not, comes with the added pressures of:

• Strong levels of C-level/VP-level attention and communications.
• Multiple project teams and stakeholders making SEO-impacting decisions.
• SEO pros needing to be involved in “non-traditional” SEO calls and planning meetings.

In a large site migration, there is also the increased potential for something known as “migration lag.”

What Is Migration Lag?

Migration lag refers to the time period after launching a new website where traffic and rankings drop as search engines discover and index the new site.

For huge enterprise sites with hundreds of thousands of URLs, this lag can last for months.

To minimize migration lag, you must have a solid redirect strategy before the new site launches. This means:

• Prioritizing redirects for high-traffic and high-value pages. Focus on redirecting pages that drive the most traffic and revenue first.
• Using wildcards to redirect categories of pages. For example, redirect /product/* to /new-site/all-products/.
• Including URL parameters in redirects. Make sure redirects pass on any query parameters, like /product/123?color=red to /new-site/product/123?color=red.
• Breaking redirect chains. If a page has been redirected multiple times, point the final redirect to the new destination URL.
• Redirecting backlinks. Find all links pointing to the old site and set up redirects so they point to the proper new pages. This preserves the link equity you’ve built up.
• Accounting for recent redirects. If you’ve done any redirects in the past six months, set up new redirects to point those pages to the proper new URLs.

With technical SEO savvy and patience, you can navigate an enterprise website migration with minimal traffic and rankings loss.

Stay on top of your redirects and keep optimizing and reacting to your data and Google’s ever-changing search engine results pages (SERPs), and search traffic will return to normal.

Soft-Launch Pre-Migration

In June 2023, John Mueller floated the idea of launching a new domain “early” before the official migration switchover.

This was interesting, as the general best practice narrative has been to not let the new domain be open to crawling before the migration switchover date.

As with any new recommendation, this is something I’ve tested since on personal project sites and with client moves.

Testing has shown that indexing has happened faster for the new domain, especially when compared to the domains in my “How Long Should A Migration Take” study.

In the Google Search Console screenshot below, I migrated a domain on January 28, but I put the new domain live and crawlable/indexable from January 21.

By February 1, the new domain was 100% indexed, and Google had even crawled and processed all the /feed URLs that were set to nodindex.

Screenshot from Google Search Console, February 2025

While this was a small website (1,300 URLs), the data was similar to other domain migrations and subdomain to subfolder migrations I’ve taken this approach with.

The most common pushback I’ve had to this approach has been the wider business desire to “make a splash” with PR around the launch and the chance of an existing customer finding the new site early. If they share the new site, the potential problems this could cause can diminish any benefits gained.

The second most common pushback, which is valid, is if there have been substantial changes to content, product, or brand that need to remain under embargo until the scheduled launch date.

Defining The Migration Strategy

Once you’ve audited your existing site and redirects, it’s time to map out how you want to handle the migration.

The strategy you develop now will determine how seamless this transition is for both your users and search engines.

Define Goals

What do you want to achieve with this migration? Are you aiming to consolidate domains, move to a new content management system (CMS), restructure content, or combine?

Be very clear on your objectives so you can develop the best approach.

Prioritize Redirects

With hundreds of thousands of URLs, you’ll need to determine which redirects are most critical to implement first. Focus initially on:

• Your most important pages (homepage, product pages, etc.).
• Pages that generate a substantial amount of website leads/revenue, either directly or indirectly.
• Pages that generate the most organic traffic for the website.
• Pages with strong backlink profiles. Those that are crawled frequently by Google/other search engines should be prioritized above those with bigger backlink clusters – but this is an objective measure you will need to determine.

Once the high-priority redirects are handled, work your way down from there. Don’t worry about redirecting every single URL right away.

As long as you have the majority of important pages and traffic accounted for, the remaining redirects can be added over time.

A great way to prioritize redirects, is to create a dashboard of all relevant data you wish to consider and prioritize by (such as the examples I’ve given above) and creating a matrix with RANK.EQ in Google Sheets, and then a prioritization categorizer.

The example below is a very simplified version of this. First, you want to collate all your data at the URL level:

Image by author, February 2025

You then want to rank these values against their individual metric data sets. To do this, you use =RANK.EQ(VALUE,VALUE RANGE).

This lets you see which URLs are in the higher percentile and which ones are in the lower percentile:

Image by author, February 2025

You then want to automate batch assignment, and this requires three steps.

First, a “reverse RANK.EQ”, which would be:

=COUNT(A:A) - RANK.EQ(A1, A:A) + 1

Which will tell you which URLs are “the best” based on all four metric ranks combined:

Image by author, February 2025

From here, you can either convert the Overall EQ to percentages in another column, and then run a rule against them that if they are =< or => certain thresholds, they fall into different batches.

You can also split the rows up by volume ordered by the Overall EQ if you have redirect limits (like when moving to Salesforce Commerce Cloud or SAP Hybris; read more below).

Map Content And URL Structure

Determine how you want to reorganize or restructure your content on the new site.

Map out which existing URLs will redirect to which new destinations. Group related content and consolidate where possible.

The new information architecture should be intuitive and user-friendly.

Redirect Types

For the bulk of redirects, use 301 permanent redirects.

In some cases, temporary 302 redirects may make sense, especially if the page content is still being migrated.

Be very careful when using wildcards, and always do spot checks to ensure there are no 404 errors. Redirect parameters whenever possible to avoid duplicate content issues.

Backlinks

Make a list of any pages with strong backlink profiles and ensure they are redirected properly. Reach out to webmasters linking to those pages and let them know the new URL to see if they will update the link on their page.

This helps to preserve the SEO value built up over time.

With careful planning and strategic prioritizing, you can migrate an enterprise website and put the necessary redirects in place without (too much) chaos. But go slowly; this is not a task to rush!

Think through each step and check your work along the way.

Establishing The Migration Project Timelines

When managing a large website migration, establishing realistic timelines is crucial.

Trying to redirect hundreds of thousands of URLs in a short timeframe is a recipe for disaster.

You need to plan ahead and be strategic in how you phase the work.

It’s also very important that migration timelines are a collaborative effort involving all stakeholders.

Far too often, the business determines an arbitrary deadline without taking into account the feasibility of all teams to complete all necessary actions comfortably in time.

Avoid Phased/Partial Migrations

Avoiding phased or partial migrations is crucial when managing redirects for an enterprise website. Piecemealing your migration will only create more work and headaches down the road.

I worked on a migration in the past two years that was consolidating multiple domains (products) under a new umbrella domain, and the original plan was to do one after the other in a phased approach.

More than a year later, the second domino still hasn’t fallen. Google has started to rank the umbrella domain for products in the group it isn’t optimized for – causing internal domain cannibalization and performance issues as the brand entity is “fractured” across multiple domains.

Prior to this, I’d never witnessed a phased or partial migration mitigate the risks to the performance that the cautious decision-makers felt it would.

Do It All At Once

The best approach is to redirect all URLs at the same time. This ensures:

• No pages are left orphaned without a redirect in place.
• There are no redirect chains created that need to be cleaned up later. Redirect chains can negatively impact SEO and user experience.
• All backlinks point to the proper new destination page. If done in phases, old pages may accumulate new backlinks that then need to be redirected.

Setting Up 301 Redirects At Scale

At an enterprise level, setting up 301 redirects for tens or hundreds of thousands of URLs requires some strategic planning.

Here are some tips for tackling this at scale:

Using Wildcards And Handling Parameter URLs

When managing redirects for an enterprise website, wildcards and parameters become your best friends. With so many URLs, creating individual redirects for each would be an endless task.

Wildcards allow you to redirect groups of pages at once.

Say you have product pages like /product/abc123, /product/def456, /product/ghi789. You can set up a wildcard redirect like /product/* to point to the new /products page.

This single redirect will capture all product pages and send visitors to the right place.

Parameters, like IDs, SKUs, or dates, often change when site content gets updated or reorganized.

Rather than tracking down each instance of an old parameter to redirect it, use a redirect that includes the parameter.

For example, if you have a URL like /blog/post?id=123 that is now /news/story/123, set up the redirect /blog/post?id= to point to /news/story/.

This will catch any page with that parameter pattern and send visitors to the new structure.

When used properly at an enterprise scale, wildcards and parameters can:

• Save countless hours of manual redirect creation and maintenance.
• Ensure no page is left behind during a migration or site architecture change.
• Continue to capture new pages that match the pattern as the site grows and evolves.

Be very careful when using wildcards and parameters in your redirects. Test them thoroughly to ensure no unintended pages are caught in the net.

Monitor them regularly, even after launch, to catch any issues early. Used responsibly, though, they are indispensable tools for managing redirects at an enterprise level.

Breaking Redirect Chains

Redirect chains can easily form when you have a high volume of redirects on an enterprise website.

A redirect chain occurs when a URL redirects to another URL that also redirects, creating a chain of multiple redirects to reach the final destination page.

To avoid redirect chains, you’ll need to trace back through your recent redirect history to find the original source URL. Once you identify the initial URL that started the chain, redirect it directly to the final destination page.

This will cut out all the middle redirects in the chain and provide a much better user experience.

• Check your server log files to view URL redirect histories from the past three to six months. Look for any patterns of the same URL redirecting multiple times.
• Use a redirect crawler tool to automatically detect redirect chains on your site. These tools will crawl your site and log any series of multiple redirects for the same URL.
• For recent redirects less than 180 days old, double-check that the original URL is now redirecting properly to the correct final destination. Newer redirects have a higher chance of issues, so verifying them will help avoid future problems.
• If you discover broken redirect chains, fix them by redirecting the initial source URL directly to the last destination URL in the chain. Remove any middle redirects that are no longer needed.
• Test all fixes to ensure the redirect chain is fully broken and the user experience is improved. Check that SEO rankings and traffic have stabilized for the URLs involved.

By diligently detecting and breaking redirect chains, you’ll provide a much better overall experience for your users and site visitors.

Your enterprise website will function more efficiently, and you’ll avoid potential drops in search rankings and traffic.

Historic Redirects

When migrating an enterprise website, it’s easy to forget about redirects that were already in place. These historic redirects, especially those under six months old, still need to be accounted for to avoid traffic loss.

As you audit your site’s current redirects, make a list of any that point to pages that will be changing or removed in the migration.

These redirects will need to be updated to point to the new destination URLs. Some things to look for include:

• Temporary event pages that now redirect to a general section.
• Product pages that now redirect to an updated model.
• Blog posts that redirect to a category archive.

Double-check that any historic redirects over six months old still need to be in place. Some may be sending signals to search engines that are no longer needed.

Removing unnecessary historic redirects will also help to simplify your site’s redirect structure and make it easier to manage going forward.

When setting up your migration’s redirect plan, be sure to factor in updating any historic redirects to their new destination URLs.

Leaving these behind could result in lost traffic and rankings for important pages on your site.

Staying on top of your enterprise website’s historic and new redirects during migration is key to a successful transition with minimal SEO impact.

Overcoming Redirect Limits

If you have an enterprise website with hundreds of thousands of pages, you may run into issues with redirect limits from your CMS or ecommerce platform.

Many systems like SAP Hybris and Salesforce Commerce Cloud cap the number of redirects you can have at 50,000 to 100,000. For a major website migration (especially enterprise ecommerce websites), this likely won’t cut it.

To get around these constraints, you’ll need to get creative. A few options to consider:

• Use wildcard redirects to capture categories of pages. For example, redirect /products/* to /shop/*. This single redirect will capture all pages that start with /products.
• Exclude parameters from redirects when possible. If you have pages like /product-name?color=red and /product-name?size=large, redirect only /product-name to the new URL. The parameters are often not indexed or linked to, so you can leave them out of the redirect.
• Break up redirect chains. If you have a series of three+ redirects for a single page, break up the chain and create direct redirects from the initial URLs to the final destination. Historically, chained redirects were thought to pass along link juice, but this has been proven false. Keep redirects as direct as possible.
• Prioritize mission-critical pages. When you start to reach the redirect limit, focus on redirecting pages that drive significant traffic and revenue. You can leave less important pages unredirected or with a 404 error temporarily.
• Ask your CMS vendor about increasing limits. Many systems will increase redirect limits on an enterprise website if you ask and explain your needs. Be prepared to pay additional fees for this add-on.

With creative thinking and persistence, you can overcome most redirect limits and complete an enterprise website migration without losing a big chunk of your organic traffic.

The key is having a well-thought-out redirect strategy and implementing it well before you hit your CMS’s limits.

Benchmarking Organic Performance (Traffic, Rankings, Indexation)

Once the redirects have been implemented, it’s time to see how your organic traffic and rankings have been impacted.

Benchmarking Your Progress

This will help determine if any further optimization is needed. Here are a few key metrics to monitor:

• Organic search traffic. Compare traffic from major search engines like Google before and after the migration. Expect some initial drop in traffic, but it should start recovering within one to two months. If traffic is still significantly lower after three months, revisit your redirect implementation.
• Keyword rankings. Track the rankings of your most important keywords to see if their positions have changed. Drops in ranking are common after a migration, but rankings should start improving again over time as search engines recrawl your new site. Major drops that don’t improve could signal redirect or content issues that need to be addressed.
• Indexation. Use a tool like Google Search Console to check how much of your new site has been indexed. A large, complex site can take three to six months for Google to fully recrawl and re-index. Look for steady increases in indexation over time. If indexation stalls or drops, there may be technical issues preventing Google from accessing parts of your site.
• 404 errors. Monitor your 404 errors to ensure any broken links are redirecting properly. High numbers of 404s, especially old URLs, indicate redirects that need to be created or fixed.
• Backlinks. Do a backlink audit to verify that any links pointing to your old site now redirect to the proper new URLs. Failure to redirect backlinks is a common cause of traffic and ranking loss after a website migration.

Regularly benchmarking these key metrics will give you valuable insight into how well your enterprise website migration and redirect implementation is going.

Make adjustments as needed to get your new site’s organic performance back on track.

Communicating Migration Performance To The C-Level

Communicating migration performance to leadership is crucial for continued support and investment in your enterprise website.

Even if the migration itself goes smoothly, problems can arise after launch if the C-suite isn’t on board.

Set Clear Expectations

Before the migration, sit down with executives and set concrete goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the new site.

Not all metrics need to matter directly to SEO, but giving the C-level more data and clarity can help prevent knee-jerk reactions and bad decisions from being imposed on the migrations team.

Be transparent that there may be an initial dip in metrics as the new site establishes itself. Having targets will help determine if the migration is meeting business needs after things settle in.

Share Detailed Reports

In the months following the migration, provide regular reports on how the new site performs compared to the old site and the established KPIs.

Compare these same metrics from the old site to give context on progress. Be open about any issues, and have solutions and next steps ready to propose.

It often helps to create a Looker Studio report so the C-level has instant access to data and feels as though they have some control over the situation.

Finally, Don’t Forget To Highlight Wins

While reporting on challenges is important, it is also important to showcase successes from the migration.

Promoting wins, big and small, demonstrates the value of the investment in the migration and builds confidence in your team.

Keeping leadership regularly informed about how the new enterprise website is performing is essential.

With open communication and a mix of progress reports and wins, executives will remain supportive and engaged in optimizing the site to achieve the best results.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Munthita/Shutterstock