International Site Migration Planning for iGaming Brands

International migrations come in a few shapes: merging country domains into one host with folders, splitting a market onto its own domain, or rebranding across several markets at once. Each changes URLs, so each falls under Google's guidance on site moves with URL changes. The extra work in iGaming is regulatory: a URL that customers use to gamble is often listed somewhere official.

Phase 1: inventory and mapping

1. Export every URL per market. Crawl each current version and pull URLs from your sitemaps and analytics, so pages without internal links are not missed.
2. Map one to one. Google calls mapping old URLs to new URLs important. Map each old page to its closest new equivalent in the same language and market, never to a generic home page.
3. Map the hreflang sets. Every cluster in the old structure needs its new cluster written down before launch, including any cross-domain members such as a .es site.
4. Check each market's register. The GGL whitelist names permitted websites in Germany, the Gambling Commission's public register covers British licensees, iGaming Ontario's directory lists Ontario operators and their sites, and Spain's operator search lists each licensee's domains. If the domain changes, find out from the regulator or counsel what must be notified or approved first.

Phase 2: build and test

• Redirects. Server-side permanent redirects from each old URL to its mapped new URL, in one hop.
• Canonicals. Google says each new URL should have a self-referencing canonical, and that canonicals on the new site must use the new URLs.
• Hreflang. Google asks you to update the annotations to use the new URLs. Every member of every cluster must point at new URLs, or return links break across the whole set.
• Sitemaps. Prepare new sitemaps with the new URLs and their hreflang sets, and keep the old sitemap, because Google asks you to submit both the old and the new sitemaps.
• Market rules. Keep legal redirects in place. For Spain, connections from Spanish territory and Spanish accounts must reach the .es website under Ley 13/2011, art. 10.4, so test the migration redirects and the legal redirect together.

Phase 3: launch and Search Console

The Change of Address tool helps Google move signals from one domain to another, but its limits shape international moves:

Google says the tool's forwarding continues for 180 days after you start, and a request can be cancelled for 180 days. Google's site move guide also says to expect temporary ranking fluctuation, and that most pages of a small to medium site can take a few weeks to move.

Phase 4: after launch

1. Crawl the old URL list daily for the first weeks and confirm every URL redirects once to its mapped target.
2. Crawl the new site and compare each hreflang set with the planned cluster.
3. Watch Search Console's page indexing reports for each new property, and the old properties for URLs still indexed.
4. Keep the redirects. Google advises keeping them as long as possible, generally at least one year, and says that from users' perspective you can consider keeping them indefinitely.
5. Record what moved and when, so a later ranking change can be matched to an event instead of guessed at.

Questions

Do 301 redirects lose ranking value?

Google says 301 and other permanent redirects do not cause a loss in PageRank. Rankings can still fluctuate temporarily during a move, so plan for a period of change.

Can the Change of Address tool move a language folder?

No. Google's help page says the tool works only on domain-level properties and that path-level properties cannot be moved. Use redirects, updated hreflang and canonicals, and both sitemaps instead.

Should I migrate all markets on the same day?

Not necessarily. Moving one market at a time limits the number of broken clusters at any moment, but every intermediate state still needs complete, consistent hreflang sets across old and new URLs.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, Site moves and migrations, last updated August 20, 2026.
2. Google Search Console Help, Change of Address tool, no date shown.
3. Google Search Central, Latest Google Search documentation updates (entry of June 17, 2026, on domain variants).
4. BOE, Ley 13/2011, de regulación del juego (consolidated text), art. 10.4.
5. GGL, Whitelist of permitted operators, checked October 26, 2026.
6. Gambling Commission, Public register, last updated November 12, 2024.
7. iGaming Ontario, Regulated iGaming market (directory of operators and sites), accurate as of September 1, 2026; AGCO, List of registered internet gaming operators (points to that directory), no date shown.
8. Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego, Buscador de operadores, checked October 26, 2026.