Post-migration: bulk-check whether Google has followed your 301s

Migrations always feel done before they actually are. The 301s are in place, Search Console shows the new property, traffic is recovering — but until you've confirmed Google has rolled over every old URL to the new one, you're still bleeding link equity from the unmapped tail.

The migration follow-up audit

1. Pull your pre-migration sitemap (or top 200 URLs from Search Console).
2. Run them through IndexerNow's Status tab against the OLD URLs.
3. Look at the indexedUrl field in the response. If it shows the new URL, Google has rolled over. If it shows the old URL (or nothing), Google hasn't yet.
4. For URLs that haven't rolled over, push the NEW URL through the Indexing API.

Edge cases to watch for

• 301s that redirect to a 404 (the new URL doesn't exist). Fix or remove the 301.
• Redirect chains longer than 2 hops — Google may give up and de-index.
• Old URLs canonicalizing to themselves instead of the new URL. Audit the canonical tag on the redirected page.
• Soft-404s: a redirected URL serves a generic "page not found" body but returns 200. Google treats this as deletion.

Timeline expectations

Most migrations are mostly-rolled-over within 4-8 weeks. Long-tail URLs (low traffic, few backlinks) can take 6 months or never roll over at all if Google decides they're not worth re-crawling. The Indexing API is how you compress that timeline for the URLs you care about.