Changing website platform is the point at which a dealer website is most likely to lose search traffic it took years to build. Most of that loss is avoidable, and almost all of it comes from the same place: addresses that worked on the old site and stop working on the new one.
Search engines rank pages, not websites. Every model page, service page, blog post and vehicle listing that has been found, linked to and shared has its own standing, and that standing is attached to its address. Change the address without telling anyone, and the page starts again from nothing. Multiply that across a group site and you have the drop in enquiries that tends to show up a few weeks after launch, when nobody is looking for it.
Why the addresses change
Platforms organise pages differently, so a move almost always changes most of the URLs on the site. When Sandicliffe Motor Group moved to Autonomy, an old Ford model page at /2020-new-ford-kuga-tour became /ford/new/kuga, and /all-new-transit-connect-phev.html became /ford-transit-centre/new/ford-transit-connect. The new addresses are cleaner and easier to keep in order across franchises. None of the old ones would have worked without being told where to go.
That is the job of a permanent redirect, an HTTP 301: a note on the old address that says the page has moved for good, and where to. Browsers follow it, and search engines treat it as a signal to move the old page's standing to the new one.
Step 1: list every address worth keeping
Before mapping anything, build the list. A dealer site's addresses fall into four groups that behave differently, and each needs a decision:
- New model and offer pages. Usually the strongest ranking pages on a franchise site, and the ones most often renamed.
- Service and aftersales pages. Few in number, steady traffic, easy to map one to one.
- Content: news, blog posts, guides. Often the pages with the most links from other sites.
- Vehicle pages. Thousands of them, and most will have sold before the new site launches.
The old site's XML sitemap, the landing pages report in analytics and the pages report in Google Search Console between them cover nearly everything. Anything with traffic, links or rankings goes on the list.
Step 2: map one to one wherever there is an equivalent
Each address on the list gets a destination, and the best destination is the page that does the same job on the new site. For Sandicliffe, model and service pages were mapped one to one, so /air-conditioning-service.html now leads to /servicing and /about-us/history.html to /about-us. Where the new site combines several old pages into one, they all point at the combined page.
Two habits cause most of the damage here:
- Sending everything to the homepage. It looks tidy and keeps the error log quiet, but a redirect to a page that does not answer the same question is treated much like a missing page. The standing is lost anyway.
- Chains. If the old site already had redirects, point them straight at the final address. Old to older to new is slower for visitors and less reliable for search engines.
Step 3: treat vehicle pages as their own problem
Vehicle pages are what make dealer migrations different from most website moves. Stock turns over constantly, so by launch day most of the old site's vehicle pages describe cars that have already gone. Mapping them one to one is impossible, and dropping them leaves a large number of dead links.
The answer is to send each one to the closest live search. On Hippo Motor Group's move, old stock addresses were mapped make by model, so /cars/audi/a3 now opens the used Audi A3 search at /used-cars/audi/a3, and /cars opens /used-cars. Sandicliffe's retired car listings were sent to live stock in the same way. Someone following an old link to a car that has sold still lands on cars like it, which is a better outcome for them and for the dealership.
The same rule applies after launch, because the new site's own vehicle pages will retire too. On Sandicliffe's site, a vehicle page that no longer exists sends the visitor to search results rather than an error page.
Step 4: bring old domains with you
Groups often run more than one domain: an old brand, an approved-used site, a domain bought and never quite retired. Each has its own history in search. Hippo had two, hippoapproved.co.uk and hippomotorgroup.com, and both now forward to hippomotorgroup.co.uk.
Forward each old domain page by page, not just to the new homepage, so that old stock and content addresses still map to their equivalents. Where a whole domain is moving, Google Search Console's change of address tool tells Google about the move directly.
Step 5: move the content, not just the stock
Blog posts, buying guides and news articles tend to be the pages other sites link to. They are also the easiest to leave behind, because they are not part of the stock feed. At Sandicliffe the blog moved across with the rest of the site and each article was redirected to its new address, so the links pointing at it still count.
Step 6: keep the map open until launch day
A redirect map is a spreadsheet of old addresses and new ones, and it is never finished early. Pages get renamed during the build, new franchise sections appear, and someone always finds a campaign page that is still being linked to. Plan for changes right up to launch rather than signing the map off weeks ahead.
Step 7: check it, then keep checking
On launch day, test a sample from every group on the list: each old address should return a single 301 to a live page. Then watch the new site's crawl errors and not-found pages in Search Console for the following weeks. Anything that turns up is either a missing redirect or a link worth fixing at the source.
What happened at Sandicliffe
Sandicliffe reported a 45% rise in organic traffic, year on year, over the first twelve months after launch. That figure is client-reported, and a lot changed at once: a new site, new vehicle pages and online reservations all launched together. It does not show that the redirect map caused the rise. It does show that moving platform did not cost the group its search traffic, which is the risk a migration has to manage. The full Sandicliffe case study covers the rest of the build, and the Hippo Motor Group case study shows the two-domain move.
The short version
- List every address with traffic, links or rankings before you map anything.
- Map one to one wherever the new site has an equivalent page.
- Never send everything to the homepage, and never chain redirects.
- Send sold and retired vehicle pages to the closest live search, before and after launch.
- Forward old domains page by page, and use Search Console's change of address tool.
- Move the blog and guides with their addresses mapped.
- Keep the map open until launch day, then test it and watch Search Console.
If a platform move is on your list, see how the platform is put together or talk to us about your own site.
