You need Google’s Change of Address tool only if your domain name itself is changing. If you built a brand new site and kept the same web address, there is nothing to file. The tool covers the move from one domain or subdomain to another, and Google spells out the moves it will not cover.
What the tool is actually for
Search Console Help has a page called Change of Address tool. It says to use it “when you move your website from one domain or subdomain to another.” It tells Google about the change and helps move your Search results from the old site to the new one. It also says to use the tool after you have already moved and redirected your site. That page carries no update date.
So the case it covers is narrow. Old address bobsplumbingkc.com, new address bobsplumbing.com. That is the whole job.
The same page lists what the tool does not do. It is not for moving from http to https. It is not for shuffling pages around inside one site. It is not for the www to non-www swap. It is not for a move where the addresses stay the same.
It also warns against stacking moves. File a move from site A to site B, and you cannot immediately file another from site B to site C.
Why most rebuilds never touch it
A contractor buying a new website usually keeps the same domain. New pages, new look, same name on the truck. The tool has nothing to say about that, so you skip it.
Moving to a different host is the same story. Your domain does not change, so this is not the form for it. That question has its own answer over at changing hosts while keeping the same web addresses.
The case where you do need it is a real name change. You bought out another company, you dropped a city from your name, or you finally got the domain you always wanted. Now every page sits at a different address, Google is holding years of history against the old one, and every listing that names the old address needs editing too.
What Google asks for before you file
The help page is blunt about the requirements. You must be an owner of both the old and the new property in Search Console, and you must use the same Google account for both.
The redirects go in first. The page says the tool “runs a quick check before sending the move request to Google, to confirm that you own both sites, and to check for 301s on a few pages on your site.” What a failed check costs you depends on the check. Google splits them in two: fail a critical pre-move check and you have to fix the issue before you can continue, fail a non-critical one and you get a warning with recommendations while the request carries on. The page does not say which of the two the redirect check is, so put the redirects live first and take the question off the table.
The kind of redirect matters. Google Search Central publishes a page called Redirects and Google Search, last updated April 14, 2026. It says the 301 and 308 status codes “mean that a page has permanently moved to a new location,” and that Googlebot follows a permanent redirect while “the indexing pipeline uses the redirect as a signal that the redirect target should be canonical.” A temporary redirect gets followed, but is not used as that signal. Ask whoever is running the move which kind they set up.
One more requirement trips people up. The tool only works on a property at domain level. Google’s own examples: you can move example.com, m.example.com, or http://example.com, but you cannot move something at a path like http://example.com/petstore/.
Search Console Help’s page on adding a property explains the two kinds you can own. A Domain property takes in every subdomain and more than one protocol, and the help page lists its verification as DNS record only. A URL prefix property matches only the exact prefix you typed, protocol included. That page carries no update date either.
The 180 day clock
Here is a number you can go and check yourself. Open the Change of Address tool help page and count how many times 180 turns up. It is there five times.
Google forwards signals from the old site to the new one, and the page says “These actions continue for 180 days after you start migration in Search Console.” After that period, “Google does not recognize any relationship between the old and new sites.” Search Console shows the move notice for 180 days. You can cancel the request for 180 days.
The fifth one is about your redirects, and it is a floor rather than a finish line. That page says to maintain the redirects “for at least 180 days,” and longer if you still see any traffic to them from Google Search. Google’s own guide to moving a site with URL changes, last updated August 20, 2026, gives a longer number for the same job: “Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year.” Two Google pages, two figures, and the safe reading is the longer one. There is more on that in how long you have to keep the old redirects.
The help page adds a note about the old domain itself. Google recommends you keep paying for it for at least a year, so nobody else picks up your abandoned name and puts it to bad use.
What it will not do for you
It does not move your subdomains. The help page says the tool “does not move any subdomains below the specified domain (including www).” It also tells you to use the tool for every subdomain variant of the old domain, verified in Search Console, even the ones you are not actively using. Run more than one, and each gets its own filing.
It does not wipe the old site out of Google. That page says Google “does not erase the old site from the index, and URLs from the old site can continue to be shown in Search results if they are available and don’t have an equivalent page on the new site.”
It does not protect your rankings. Google’s site move guide says visibility “may fluctuate temporarily during the move,” and that “a small to medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move.” Weeks of jumpy numbers is the normal outcome, not the alarming one.
Here is the limit in all of the above. Google publishes what the tool does. Google does not publish how much better a move goes with the form filed than without it. Nobody outside Google can measure that on one plumbing company’s website. Anyone who tells you the tool rescued a client’s rankings is handing you a story, not a measurement. File it anyway, since it is free and the form is short. Just do not expect a receipt for it.
What to do next
- Answer one question first. Is the domain name itself changing? If no, stop here.
- Verify the new domain in Search Console, on the same Google account that holds the old one.
- Put the permanent redirects live, every old address to its matching new address, before you file anything.
- Open the Change of Address tool inside the old property and follow what it asks.
- File once for every subdomain variant you have verified, www included.
- Keep the redirects a year, and longer while the old addresses still pull traffic.
- Keep paying for the old domain for at least a year after the move.
- Watch Search Console for a few weeks, and expect the numbers to move around.
All of that you can do yourself, with a free Search Console account and one quiet afternoon. If you would rather it were somebody else’s afternoon, the move and the watching afterwards sit inside the search checks. The redirect list is the part carrying your history, and there is a longer walk through building one in migrating a WordPress site without losing your rankings.