Redirects at launch

Every address the previous version of a site published has to point at its closest equivalent on the new one. The document that records which address goes where is a redirect map, it is produced before launch from a crawl of the live site, and it is the single highest-consequence task in a rebuild.

The failure mode is specific and it is the reason this page is written the way it is: missing redirects break every existing link, bookmark, directory listing, email signature and search result at once, and the breakage is completely invisible from the new home page. Nobody notices for weeks.

What has to be preserved

Source of an old link	Why it matters
Search results	The address indexed today is the address people click tomorrow
Other websites	Directories, suppliers, associations, industry bodies
Email signatures and documents	Sent years ago and still being opened
Printed material	Cannot be updated at all
Bookmarks	Held by your existing customers
Paid advertising	Landing pages configured in a campaign
Social profiles	Links in bios and old posts

The last two are worth separating out. Advertising that continues to run against a broken address is spending money on error pages. Social links are usually the easiest to update and the most often forgotten.

The map: one URL pointing at another

One row per address on the old site, with the address on the new one it should point at. For example: the URL https://example.com.au/old-service-page should send a permanent redirect — a 301, not a temporary one — to https://example.com.au/services/new-service-page. One row like this, for every URL the old site published, is what the redirect map actually is, and every visitor who clicks an old search result or bookmark ends up redirected to the right place instead of an error.

Producing it requires a list of the old addresses, which means crawling the live site before it is replaced. That crawl has to happen while the old site is still up, which is why the map cannot be produced after the launch. This is the sequencing point the whole task turns on.

Three rules make the map usable.

Closest equivalent, not the home page. A visitor arriving from a result about one specific service should land on that service. Sending everything to the home page turns a specific visit into a general one, and it is treated as close to a deletion.

One hop. An old address redirecting to an address that itself redirects is slower and loses more than a direct redirect. Chains accumulate over successive rebuilds and should be flattened rather than extended.

Permanent, not temporary. A permanent redirect says the move is settled. A temporary one says it is not, and it is the wrong kind for a rebuild.

URLs with no equivalent page

Some old pages have nothing to redirect to, because the service no longer exists or the page was never worth having. Three defensible options, in order of preference.

1. Redirect to the nearest parent — a service page to the services section, a location page to the service area page.
2. Serve a genuine error page that helps: what happened, and where the visitor probably wanted to go.
3. Redirect to the home page, only where there is genuinely no closer match.

Sending a large number of pages to the home page is the pattern that looks like a lazy map, and it usually is one.

What else moves at the same time

A rebuild frequently changes more than the paths. Each of these is its own redirect problem.

• Domain change. Everything above, plus the old domain — and, where a site has been rebuilt more than once, any older domains still in circulation — has to keep resolving for as long as it is renewed. Domain licensing in Australia carries its own conditions, which are on the auDA rules.
• Protocol change. Moving to a secure connection is a redirect for every address.
• Trailing slash convention change. Trivially easy to miss and it affects every page.
• Platform change. Platforms have their own address conventions, and the pattern almost always changes.

Redirects that are not part of a rebuild

Two other cases produce the same task at a smaller scale and are worth naming, because they arrive without a project attached.

A page that is deleted. Removing a service, a location or an old article leaves an address that people and search engines still request, and the decision about where it should go is the same decision as in a rebuild.

A page that is renamed. Changing a URL to correct a spelling or reflect a new service name is a move, and it needs the same redirect. This is the case most often done without one, because it feels like an edit rather than a migration.

Verifying the redirect and URL map worked

Verification is a separate task from doing it, and it is the one that catches the misses.

Before launch: run the map through a checker that requests every old address and records what actually happens, against a copy of the new site. After launch: request every old address again on the live site. Then, in the following weeks, watch the error report in a search console for addresses being requested that return nothing — which is how the ones missing from the crawl surface.

That last step is why the search console account has to exist and be owned by the business before launch, not after. It is covered on Search Console for a new site.

What to put in the contract

Redirects are work, they take time proportional to the size of the old site, and a quote that does not mention them may not include them. Three things belong in the scope explicitly: producing the map, implementing it, and verifying it after launch.

Ask the question directly: what happens to our existing addresses, who produces the map, and who checks it afterwards. A supplier who has done rebuilds will answer immediately. What a contract should cover generally is on web design contracts in Australia, and the cost drivers behind a rebuild are on the cost of a website in Australia.

What to do next

If you are planning a rebuild, crawl the current site now and keep the list, even if the project is months away. If you have already relaunched and did not do this, the error report in a search console will tell you what is broken, and the fix is the same map produced late.