A drop in search traffic after a redesign or platform move is common, and it is usually traceable. Most of the time the cause is one of a handful of mechanical problems, not a penalty. This is the order we check them in.
1. Confirm the drop is real
Compare the same weeks year over year as well as before and after launch, so seasonality doesn’t mislead you. Then check that tracking survived the move. A missing or doubled analytics tag can make healthy traffic look like a collapse, or hide a real one. Google Search Console is the better source here because it doesn’t depend on a tag on your pages.
2. Check the old URLs
This is the most common cause. Every old address that earned traffic needs a permanent (301) redirect to its closest new page. Export your top pages from Search Console for the months before launch and test each one. Look for pages that return a 404, redirect to the home page, or pass through a chain of several redirects. Sending everything to the home page is treated much like deleting the pages.
3. Look for blocks left over from staging
Development sites are normally hidden from search engines. If a noindex tag, a robots.txt rule or a password carried over to the live site, pages drop out of the index within days. View the source of a few key pages and search for noindex, then open your robots.txt file.
4. Check canonical tags and the sitemap
A canonical tag tells Google which address is the real one. After a move, canonicals sometimes still point at the old domain or a staging address. The XML sitemap should list only live, indexable pages at their new addresses, and it should be submitted in Search Console.
5. Compare what was on the pages
Redesigns often trim copy, merge pages or rename headings. If a page ranked for a topic and the new version no longer covers it, rankings follow. Put the old and new versions of your top ten pages side by side (the Wayback Machine helps) and compare titles, headings, body copy and internal links.
6. Check product and structured data
For stores, a platform change usually changes product URLs, IDs and structured data. That can knock products out of Google Shopping and free listings even when the pages themselves load fine. Check Merchant Center diagnostics and the rich result reports in Search Console.
7. Check speed and mobile layout
A heavier theme or unoptimized images can slow pages enough to matter, especially on phones. Test a few page types before blaming the content.
What recovery looks like
Fixes for blocked pages and broken redirects tend to show once Google recrawls the site, often within a few weeks. Content that was removed takes longer, because it has to be restored and evaluated again. Fix the redirects first: the longer old addresses return errors, the more of their history is lost.
We run moves like this ourselves, including PowerWash’s move from Magento Cloud to WooCommerce, and we are often called in after someone else’s. If your traffic fell after a launch and nobody can tell you why, tell us what happened and we’ll find the cause. For planned moves, see Websites & Ecommerce and SEO & Search Visibility.