<b>Q: How do I actually KNOW my migration worked, beyond 'traffic recovered'?</b>

<b>Q: How do I actually KNOW my migration worked, beyond 'traffic recovered'?</b>

Short answer: watch the index handoff, not just the traffic graph — recovery shows up there first.

Long answer: Traffic is a lagging signal; it recovers last. The early proof your move is working lives in a few specific places, and checking them keeps you calm during the scary weeks.

What to monitor:

— Old property's indexed-page count falling while the new property's rises — that's the handoff happening.
— Crawl stats showing Google actively fetching your new URLs (not stuck on old ones).
— Spot-checked old URLs all returning a single-hop 301 to the right place.
— Key pages re-appearing in the index under the new URL when you do a 'site:' search.

If those four are moving the right direction, traffic will follow — it's mechanical.

Next step: build a simple weekly check of those four signals for the first 6-8 weeks. When the index handoff is mostly done and traffic is climbing back toward baseline, you can officially call it a successful migration.