Moving your website off Wix or Squarespace without losing what ranks
Leaving a site builder without losing rankings: map every URL that earns, redirect or 410 the rest, then check the certificate on www and the bare domain.
By Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 3 November 2026 · 6 min read
A move off a site builder keeps what ranks, after a few weeks of normal wobble, when three things are true on the day you switch: every address that earned clicks either still works or permanently redirects to its replacement, the pages you are dropping answer with a plain 404 or 410, and every version of your domain serves the new site securely. Most of that is a spreadsheet and a morning of checking. The part people forget is the last one, because the old platform can keep hold of a piece of your domain after you leave, and on one move of ours it still has at the time of writing.
Start with what earns, not with the new design
Before anything is designed, list the addresses that matter. Export the Pages table from Search Console's Performance report for the longest range it offers; Google's own guidance on traffic drops suggests widening the range to sixteen months, which also catches the seasonal pages a three-month view misses. Add the pages other sites link to, the address your Google profile's website button points at, and any page you have printed on a van, a menu or a flyer.
That list is the inventory, and every line on it gets one decision. Keeping the same address is the best outcome, even when the new site would prefer a tidier pattern. A tidy URL is not worth a page of history.
The answers an old address can give
| The old page | What the new site answers | What Google says |
|---|---|---|
| Still exists at the same address | 200: the new version of the page | Nothing to do; the page keeps its history |
| Has a new home | A permanent redirect, 301 or 308, to the closest equivalent | Google's site-move guide recommends permanent redirects such as 301 and 308, and its status code page treats 308 as equivalent to 301 |
| Gone, with no real equivalent | 404 or 410 | The same guide says pages you are not moving should return 404 or 410, and Google treats every 4xx code except 429 alike |
| Many old pages, one destination | Avoid it, unless several pages really were merged into one | Google warns against redirecting many old URLs to one irrelevant page such as the home page, which it may treat as a soft 404 |
So a 410 is not a faster way out of Google than a 404. It is a plain statement, to people and to other crawlers, that the page was removed on purpose. And redirecting everything to the home page is the one shortcut that throws history away while looking tidy.
Same domain: no Change of Address, and the redirects do the work
If you are keeping your domain, Google's Change of Address tool is not part of the move: Google says you only need it when moving from one domain or subdomain to another, and not for switching between www and non-www on the same domain. What carries your history is the addresses and the redirects. Google's site-move guide says to keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least a year, and that a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move, with ranking changes along the way being normal.
Submit the new sitemap in Search Console on the day. Google also suggests keeping the old sitemap for a while and ignoring the warnings that its URLs redirect, because redirecting is exactly what they should be doing.
A relaunch where every ranking URL was kept
When a removals company relaunched its site on 28 September 2026, every URL that had ranked was either kept or permanently redirected, the pages that were gone answered 410, and the new sitemap carried a real date for each page rather than the build time. Google had 51 of the 56 new pages indexed within three days, and the searches for the firm's own name held their position, which is the first thing a relaunch has to protect. None of it needed anything clever. It needed the inventory done before the design.
The certificate the old platform kept
A tuning garage moved off Wix, and its new site went live on 7 October 2026. Weeks later, the www address was still presenting a security certificate the old platform had issued in August, although the DNS pointed at the new server and the domain sat in no Wix account we could find. It took a support case, opened on 2 November 2026, to chase it. At the time of writing that case is still open, and the certificate has to be gone before it expires on 12 November.
A certificate is what lets a browser trust that the site at an address is the one it claims to be. If a company you have left still holds one for your www address, that part of your domain is not fully in your hands, and if it lapsed while still being served, anyone typing the www version would meet a browser warning instead of your site. We are not going to guess how this one ends. The check that found it takes a couple of minutes, and every move should include it.
Checking the certificate on both versions of your domain
- Open the www version and the bare version of your domain in a browser, one after the other, not only the one you usually type.
- On each, click the icon to the left of the address, open the certificate details, and read who issued it and its dates. Both should show a recent certificate from your new host's set-up.
- Search your domain at crt.sh, a free search run by Sectigo over the public Certificate Transparency logs. It lists the certificates issued for your name and by which authority; one you cannot account for after the move is the question to put to the old platform.
- Repeat the check a fortnight after the move, and again before any certificate you did not expect is due to expire.
The first three weeks after the switch
On the day, submit the sitemap, run a handful of the old addresses through Search Console's URL Inspection tool, send yourself a test enquiry through the new form, and run the certificate check. Over the first week, the Page indexing report should start listing old addresses as "Page with redirect", which Google describes as a URL that redirects and will not itself be indexed; for those addresses, that is the status you want. By week three, compare clicks on your own name and on your top ten pages with the same weeks before the move. A dip that recovers is a move settling. A page that was earning and has vanished is a line the inventory missed, and one redirect fixes it.
If you are planning a move and want the inventory done before anyone designs a thing, that is where our web design work in Portsmouth starts, and you can send us the current site through the quote form. Who should hold the domain and the DNS while all this happens is covered in our guide on who owns what.
Questions on this topic
Will I lose my Google rankings if I move off Wix or Squarespace?
Not if every address that earned clicks keeps working or permanently redirects to its replacement. Google's site-move guide says a small to medium-sized site can take a few weeks for most pages to move and that ranking changes during a move are normal. The losses that last come from addresses nobody mapped.
Do I need Google's Change of Address tool if I keep my domain?
No. Google says the tool is only for moving from one domain or subdomain to another. On the same domain, the redirects and the new sitemap carry the move.
Should a page I am dropping redirect or return a 410?
If it has a real equivalent on the new site, redirect it there with a 301 or 308. If it has none, let it answer 404 or 410, which Google treats alike. Do not send everything to the home page, which Google may treat as a soft 404.
How long should I keep the redirects?
As long as you can. Google's site-move guide says generally at least a year, and redirects cost almost nothing to keep.
How do I see which certificate my website is using?
Open both the www and the bare version of your domain, click the icon beside the address and read the certificate's issuer and dates. Then search your domain at crt.sh, which lists the certificates issued for it.
Can I keep my domain when I leave the site builder?
Yes. The domain is a registration, not part of the site. If you bought it through the platform, ask how to move it to a registrar account in your own name before the switch; if it is registered elsewhere, only its DNS records change.