Pre Launch Migration Audit: Final Checks Before Go Live

A website migration audit in the final week before launch has one job: prove that the new site can be crawled, redirects land where they should, tracking still records leads and sales, and the team knows exactly when to roll back. Planning and redirect mapping should already be done by this point. What follows is the last week checklist, day by day, for teams moving to a new site, template or platform.

What a launch week website migration audit covers

Earlier phases decide what the new site should be. This audit checks that the build actually matches those decisions. It is narrower than a full project review and has four parts:

1. Staging crawl: is the new site technically ready for search engines?
2. Redirect testing: does every old URL reach the right new page in one step?
3. Tracking checks: will analytics, conversions and integrations work on day one?
4. Rollback triggers: what would make the team reverse the launch, and who decides?

If redirect mapping, content parity and baseline data are not finished yet, the launch date is at risk. The wider sequence is covered in the phase by phase redesign checklist.

Seven days out: lock scope and run the staging crawl

Lock the scope

Agree that no new features or templates go in from now on, only fixes. Set a content cut off date so edits to the old site are logged and copied across. Late additions are the most common source of untested pages on launch day.

Crawl staging as a search engine would

Run a full crawl of the staging site with a desktop crawler, authenticated if staging is password protected. Treat this as your pre launch SEO audit and record every finding in one shared sheet with an owner beside each row.

Compare against the old site

Crawl the live site on the same day and compare the two crawls for your most valuable pages. Look for word count drops, missing headings and pages that have lost internal links. A page that has lost half its copy needs a content owner decision before launch, not after rankings fall.

Five days out: redirect testing

Redirect testing is where launches most often go wrong, because rules that look right in a spreadsheet behave differently on a server with caching, CDN rules and trailing slash settings.

How to test redirects before go live

1. Deploy the redirect rules to staging, or to a production like environment you can reach with a hosts file change.
2. Run every old URL from the redirect map through a crawler in list mode or a script that records status code, number of hops and final URL.
3. Confirm each row returns a single permanent redirect, which Google's site move guidance recommends, followed by a 200 on the destination.
4. Flag chains, loops and any rule sending many unrelated URLs to the home page.
5. Test common variations: trailing slash, uppercase, www and non www, HTTP to HTTPS, and URLs carrying tracking parameters.

Do not forget the long tail

Old PDFs, image URLs with backlinks, paginated archives and campaign URLs from past ads are easy to leave out. Check your backlink and analytics exports for any URL with traffic or links that is missing from the map.

Three days out: tracking and integration checks

A launch can keep every ranking and still lose leads if forms or tracking break. Test on staging with the production tracking setup where possible, using a test property or filtered test traffic.

Tracking checklist

• Analytics and tag manager containers load on every template, once only.
• Conversion events fire for form submissions, calls, WhatsApp clicks, bookings and purchases.
• Consent banners behave as intended and do not block tags that should run after consent.
• Ad platform pixels and conversion tags are present on the new thank you pages or events.
• Search Console verification will survive the move. Google's documentation notes that HTML file, meta tag or analytics based verification must be carried into the new site.

Integration checklist

• Every form delivers to the right inbox and creates a record in the CRM with the correct fields and source.
• Payment, booking and ecommerce flows complete a test transaction on staging.
• Paid ad final URLs either still exist or redirect while keeping their parameters.

Forms and CRM links fail more often than teams expect; the detail is in our guide to protecting lead flow during a redesign.

Two days out: set rollback triggers

A rollback plan only works if it is agreed before launch, while everyone is calm. Write it on one page and share it with the whole launch team.

Example rollback triggers

• Checkout, booking or primary enquiry forms fail and cannot be fixed within an agreed window.
• A large share of redirect tests fail on production and the cause is not a quick configuration fix.
• The site returns server errors or is unreachable for Googlebot or users in key markets.
• A security or data protection issue is found, such as forms sending personal data to the wrong place.

Rollback logistics

• Name one person who makes the rollback decision.
• Keep the old site and its server configuration ready to restore.
• If DNS is changing, lower the TTL in advance. Google's hosting move guidance suggests doing this at least a week before the move so changes spread faster.
• Agree how orders, form entries or accounts created on the new site during the launch window will be preserved if you roll back.

Launch day go live checklist

1. Remove staging noindex tags and robots.txt blocks; Google warns these are commonly left in place.
2. Confirm the live robots.txt and XML sitemap, then submit the sitemap in Search Console.
3. Rerun the redirect test against production.
4. Inspect a sample of key URLs with the URL Inspection tool and check firewalls or bot protection are not blocking Googlebot.
5. Submit a real test enquiry and a test transaction, and confirm they reach the CRM and appear in analytics.
6. Crawl the live site and compare with the final staging crawl.

Hypothetical example: an Abu Dhabi clinic launches a new site on a weekday morning. The production crawl shows every page carries a noindex tag inherited from a staging setting in the CMS. Because the go live checklist included a crawl within the first hour, the setting is switched off before search engines recrawl most pages.

After launch, monitoring continues for weeks. If results still slip, see how to recover traffic after a failed migration; larger organisations should also set SEO and UX governance for enterprise rebuilds.

Getting a second pair of eyes before launch

Codeeo's team supports site migrations and website development projects, including staging crawls, redirect testing and launch support. If you want an independent check, a technical SEO review can be run against your staging site. The team works from Dubai and has delivered 200+ projects across the UAE and the US. Contact Codeeo to plan your launch week.