Google Search Console Change of Address - one month and counting?

sleepermode

I submitted a Change of Address request about a month ago. Still not completed. New domain isn't indexed at all. Search Console just shows: '1 of your other sites is moving to this site.' No movement.

It's frustrating that Google offers no direct support - you're left to figure it out or post on their forums. Someone there pointed out that the delay might be because of backlinks pointing to the old domain that haven't been crawled yet. If those pages sit in a low-traffic pool, Googlebot might take ages to get to them. That makes sense technically, but a month still feels excessive.

The process is supposed to transfer authority from old to new, but it can't speed up those crawls. The question is whether this actually matters for indexing - maybe the tool just shows a pending status while the migration happens gradually. Still, not seeing any new URLs indexed is concerning.

Has anyone else waited this long? What's the actual trigger for completion, or does it just run until all backlinks are crawled?

budgetburner

Yeah, welcome to the reality of dealing with Google. There's no support line, no real human to yell at. You can try the product forum, but your mileage will vary massively.

Let me cut through the noise. The real question is: what actual problem is this causing you? You're not reverting back. The tool knows there are un-crawled links. That's it. It's a status, not a broken pipeline.

Why does it take time? Could be backlinks on pages Google hasn't bothered to crawl yet. Why haven't they been crawled? Because those pages get zero traffic and sit in a queue with a million other forgotten pages. That's just how the crawler works.

Does it matter? Probably not. The Change of Address tool's job is to tally up your site's authority from backlinks. It can't magically speed up that process. It's not frozen. It's not broken. It's just slow.

Make sense?

prpro

A month does feel like an eternity when you're waiting, but it's one of those quirks of Google Search Console migrations that can happen. Think of it like moving house - sometimes the postal service just takes a while to update all the forwarding addresses. The important thing is that you've submitted the change of address request correctly, after that, it's really a waiting game. Patience, frustrating as it is, is the main ingredient here.

digitalnomad

I've handled two domain migrations for clients - one wrapped up in about a month, the other took over 5-6 months. so it really depends. No fixed timeline, unfortunately