Want to scare an SEO? Just tell them they need to manage a site migration. Want to make an SEO faint? Tell them they need to manage to split a site into two or more sites while merging content on those sites. John Mueller from Google said it takes Google longer to process site splits and merges than normal site migrations.

John said this on X saying, “Splitting & merging tend to take much longer than a normal site migration.” Why? Because he said “there’s not much you can do other than to be patient – it just takes time.” He is even “assuming” that everything was done right and even then, it takes Google much longer to process.

If you are just migrating from domainA.com to domainB.com and keeping everything else the same, then that is much easier for Google to process. But if you are moving content from one domain to two or more different domains, with new site structures, new site purposes and so on, that can take a much longer time.

Here are those posts in context:

Has anyone experienced Google SERP confusion after a partial migration?

e.g. https://t.co/nUgzwfcLHM is our NEW site for books (formerly on https://t.co/RA0Sz7isnR) See screenshots for issues G is having with our brand

cc @JohnMu any context here would be so appreciated 🙏 pic.twitter.com/8moZCjO3vG

— Abby Gleason (@abbysuegleason) April 22, 2024

It sounds like you’re splitting the site, not just migrating it all, right? Splitting & merging tend to take much longer than a normal site migration. There’s not much you can do other than to be patient – it just takes time (assuming you did the rest well, which I’m sure is so)

— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 22, 2024

Some SEOs enjoy this process because, well, you know…

Forum discussion at X.