Q: Our agency redirected every old URL to the new homepage. Why did rankings vanish?
A: Ouch — this one stings, but it's fixable. Short answer: a redirect to the homepage is treated by Google as a soft 404, so all that page-level authority gets thrown away instead of passed forward.
Long answer: 301s only transfer ranking signals when the target is a close content match. Old /best-running-shoes pointing at your homepage tells Google "this page is gone," not "it moved here." Bulk-mapping to homepage is the single most common reason traffic craters after a move.
The fix:
— Map each old URL to its closest new equivalent, one-to-one
— Only homepage-redirect URLs with zero traffic and no inbound links
— Recrawl and confirm each 301 lands on a relevant page
Next step: pull your top 200 old URLs by clicks, and remap any that currently point at the homepage.
Migration Helpdesk
@MigrationHelpdesk
Q: Our agency redirected every old URL to the new homepage. Why did rankings vanish?
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