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Recovery checklist

48-hour post-migration recovery checklist

Use this when a redesign, CMS migration, domain move, or WordPress to Next.js launch has already gone live and organic traffic is dropping. The first job is evidence collection, not random recrawl requests.

Open recovery hub

0 to 48 hours

The sequence that avoids wasting the recovery window

0 to 2 hours

Freeze the situation and preserve evidence

  • Stop non-critical deploys, redirect edits, CMS imports, plugin changes, and tracking changes.
  • Record the exact launch date, deployment window, affected sections, and who changed redirects, CMS routes, CDN rules, or tracking.
  • Screenshot GSC Performance, GSC Pages, GA4 acquisition, GA4 landing pages, and any rank tracker views before filters change.
  • Export the old and new sitemap URLs, including old WordPress paths such as /sitemap_index.xml or /wp-sitemap.xml.

2 to 6 hours

Prove whether the drop is SEO loss or tracking loss

  • Compare GSC clicks and impressions against GA4 organic sessions for the same pre-launch and post-launch windows.
  • Check GA4 key events, form submissions, and landing-page attribution so a GTM/GA4 break is not mistaken for lost rankings.
  • Confirm production forms still reach success states and fire the expected non-PII lead events.
  • Separate brand-query changes from non-brand query drops in GSC before deciding which URLs are losing visibility.

6 to 12 hours

Build the priority URL list

  • Export GSC Pages sorted by click loss and impression loss, then mark the top URLs as P0 or P1.
  • Merge the GSC list with GA4 organic landing pages, old sitemap URLs, backlink exports, and pre-launch crawl data.
  • For each old URL, record the expected destination, current status code, final URL, redirect hop count, and whether the final page matches the old intent.
  • Flag old URLs that return 404, soft 404, 302, redirect chains, redirect loops, or homepage catch-alls.

12 to 24 hours

Find the technical failure pattern

  • Crawl the new sitemap and confirm every URL returns 200, is indexable, has a self-canonical, and appears in internal links.
  • Fetch priority pages with curl and verify raw HTML contains title, description, canonical, robots directives, and JSON-LD.
  • Check robots.txt, CDN headers, and template output for noindex or X-Robots-Tag mistakes.
  • Use GSC URL Inspection on representative P0 URLs to compare user-declared canonical, Google-selected canonical, last crawl, sitemap discovery, and indexing reason.

24 to 36 hours

Fix only the proven P0 blockers first

  • Fix global crawl/indexing blockers before individual pages. A sitewide noindex, robots block, or CDN header issue comes first.
  • Deploy redirect fixes for P0 old URLs before adjusting lower-value URLs.
  • Correct canonical, sitemap, noindex, and internal-link conflicts on the destination pages that should receive the recovered signals.
  • Run a post-fix crawl from the old URL list and from the new sitemap before touching Search Console submissions.

36 to 48 hours

Request recrawling after the broken state is gone

  • Use GSC live test on fixed P0 pages and confirm the page is available, indexable, canonicalized correctly, and in the sitemap.
  • Request indexing only for fixed priority pages. Do not request indexing for pages still blocked, thin, canonicalized away, or missing content.
  • Resubmit the sitemap only when the sitemap is clean, current, and Search Console evidence shows stale, missing, or unprocessed state.
  • Create a monitoring log with URL, issue, fix, deploy time, recrawl request time, and next check date.

Evidence pack

Pull these before changing more code

The right export set turns a traffic drop from a debate into a fix order. Missing evidence makes teams over-fix low-value pages and miss the actual blockers.

  • GSC Performance by page and query for 90 days before and after launch.
  • GSC Pages report with indexing reasons and any spike in not indexed URLs.
  • GA4 organic landing pages, traffic acquisition, key events, and conversion paths.
  • Old sitemap export, new sitemap export, old URL crawl, new sitemap crawl, and redirect-map file.
  • Backlink or top-pages export from Ahrefs, Semrush, GSC Links, or the closest available source.
  • Deployment notes, redirect rules, CMS route changes, CDN changes, GTM/GA4 changes, and rollback options.

Escalation

When this becomes custom recovery scope

More than 10 percent of previously indexed URLs now return 404, soft 404, or homepage redirects.

GSC shows a sharp indexed-page drop, duplicate without selected canonical, or crawled/discovered not indexed across priority templates.

Google-selected canonicals differ from declared canonicals on important pages.

GA4 and GSC disagree enough that tracking may be broken at the same time as SEO signals changed.

The site has ecommerce, faceted navigation, international sections, old subdomains, or 3,000+ URL inventory.

The agency cannot produce the redirect map, pre-launch crawl, or launch QA log.

Recovery tools

Use the checklist with the right supporting asset

Traffic drop recovery audit

Use this when the checklist points to a custom recovery scope or code-level diagnosis.

Open resource

Redirect map template

Use this sheet to structure old URL, new URL, priority, target status, canonical, and QA fields.

Open resource

Deindexing triage

Use this when Search Console shows discovered, crawled not indexed, noindex, duplicate, or soft 404 reasons.

Open resource

30-day GSC monitoring runbook

Use this after the immediate recovery window to track Search Console pages, queries, devices, indexing, sitemaps, and URL inspections.

Open resource

30-day monitoring process

Use this after the first 48 hours to keep coverage, crawl, rich-result, and traffic changes visible.

Open resource

If the checklist is already showing P0 failures, stop guessing

Send the domain, launch date, GSC/GA4 access, old URL exports, redirect map, and what changed. The deliverable is a recovery order your developer can implement, with evidence for each URL group.

View sample audit