John Mueller from Google discussed how splitting a website into multiple sites or merging several sites can lead to months of search result instability. This was highlighted during a recent Google Webmaster Central hangout, where a site owner inquired about the best approach to split a website while relocating content to a new site.
The owner asked, “I want to move some content from a French website to a new one. I’d also like to create a multilingual website by manually translating content into several languages. What’s your advice for doing this as cleanly as possible?”
Before delving into the technicalities of splitting a website, Mueller pointed out the challenges Google may face in processing these changes. Mueller emphasized that it’s unrealistic to expect the current search rankings of content on an existing site to remain the same after being moved to a new platform. It may take several months for search rankings to stabilize following such a change, and the final outcome is uncertain.
While Mueller did not discourage splitting a site, he suggested it can be beneficial in certain scenarios, but patience is essential when observing search rankings.
In Mueller’s response, he mentioned, “I think what you’re doing is splitting an existing website and transferring part of that content to a different site. It’s important to understand that splitting or merging a site is more challenging for us to handle compared to managing a typical site. You should expect a delay in achieving stable results, and the final state isn’t guaranteed.”
He further explained, “If you separate some content from one site and move it to another, the new site may not receive the same level of clicks and impressions as the original. There might be differences, especially if new content is added to the new site.”
From a technical perspective, Mueller advised ensuring redirects from the old pages to the new ones are set up. Internal linking on both the old and new site should reflect the changes. If an internal link on the original site points to a page, make sure it directs to the new site. This informs search engines of the content transition.
For making a new site multilingual, he supported the idea and recommended proper hreflang setup for multilingual pages. This setup is generally straightforward unless there are too many language versions, but it’s quite standard nowadays.
Mueller concluded with, “I believe this is a good move, just remember to be patient.”
