A UK news publisher’s visibility for trending Google news queries dropped by 98% in the two weeks after switching from .co.uk to .com, according to NewzDash.
Founder John Shehata notes the site was already losing visibility during several core updates, and internal technical issues likely contributed. The data doesn’t show the switch is the sole cause.
The figure is NewzDash’s Search Visibility score, which tracks trending UK news queries via Top Stories and organic results, estimating click share based on ranking, estimated click-through rate, ranking duration, and URL count. It predicts clicks, not actual traffic. Shehata says typical SEO tools estimate a 60-70% drop.
What NewzDash Tracked
NewzDash monitored the .co.uk domain for 14 months before the move. Shehata notes it held 1% to 2% visibility across the news results the company monitors, and that similar-sized sites usually sit at 3% to 6%.
Visibility dropped during migration, falling to 0.02% two weeks later, a 98% decline by NewzDash’s count.
The .com domain didn’t pick up what the .co.uk lost. Four months on, the post says, it shows only a handful of isolated appearances.
By his account, the publisher moved its entire site overnight because it wanted one global domain and wanted to stop being classified by ad systems as a UK site. The post doesn’t name the publisher or share the underlying data, so the 98% can’t be checked independently.
Why The 98% Figure Differs From SEO Tools
By Shehata’s description, the tools he compares against, which he doesn’t name, follow a fixed set of keywords, most of them evergreen. NewzDash tracks the site’s visibility on a changing set of trending news queries, across Top Stories and organic search results. This approach is similar to the method I discussed in July for Top Stories data. That’s also where Shehata says the impact was deepest.
What Google Says About Domain Moves
Google’s site-move guide explains that changing domains is a standard type of site move. It covers mapping old URLs to new ones, setting up redirects, submitting a Change of Address in Search Console, and monitoring URLs. Google confirms permanent redirects won’t harm PageRank and notes that each URL change is processed separately. The guide also mentions potential ranking fluctuations during recrawling. For medium-sized sites, it can take weeks or longer for new URLs to appear in search results, with larger sites potentially taking even more time.
The page says large sites can test one section first, ideally one that doesn’t update often. It advises against combining a domain move with a CMS change or redesign.
For Google News, Publisher Center guidance says to follow the same process when switching domains, update the News sitemap when site structure changes, ensure Google’s crawler can read your site easily, and avoid long redirect chains. Google points out that relevance, prominence, authoritativeness, freshness, usability, location, and language are all important for ranking in Google News. Neither page says how these signals carry over when a site switches domains.
In June, Google’s John Mueller told a Reddit user weighing a .ca to .com move for branding, “A site move is always a big deal, even if you take the time to do it right. It’s a lot of work, and the outcome is impossible to know fully ahead of time.”
Shehata’s Explanation
Shehata says drastic site changes like switching CMS, redesigning, or changing domains trigger Google to reevaluate the site entirely, which he calls the “Google Reset,” his term rather than Google’s.
He argues Google’s news surfaces weigh hostname signals such as publication history and editorial trust. While a 301 redirect passes link equity, it “may not carry that history,” he writes.
Google’s guide doesn’t specify that news history is hostname-based. Shehata advises transferring content in sections and waiting for the new domain to appear in Google News before a full switch, the first in line with Google’s advice for large sites, the second not covered in Google’s guide.
Why This Matters
A domain migration might look manageable in a standard rank tracker and near-total in a system tracking trending news queries. Here, two measurements differed by about 30 points, with Shehata attributing the gap to different query sets each tool monitors.
NewzDash’s data includes Top Stories and organic results but can’t separate their contributions to the decline. A migration report based only on evergreen keywords would likely underestimate losses on rapidly changing news queries.
Looking Ahead
Shehata reports no sign of recovery after four months, and it’s unclear whether migration, earlier core updates, or technical issues caused the most damage.
Last year, Roger Montti discussed a case where Mueller pointed to a large amount of unrelated content from a domain migration. That site was public, so the migrated content was verifiable. No such check is possible here. More evidence could come from Google commenting on the case or NewzDash releasing the data. Neither had happened as of publication.
A newsroom that’s thinking about consolidation now has a tracked case that points the same way as Google’s advice to transition big sites in parts. It also emphasizes how helpful it is to check trending-query visibility before making the switch, instead of after.
Featured Image: beast01/Shutterstock
