How to change the URL of a Google AdSense site

How to change the URL of a Google AdSense site

You have an existing website on Google AdSense and you’re planning on moving it to a new domain. How do you change the URL in Google AdSense?

While migrating an existing website to a new domain always carries some risks, namely of a ranking drop if you make even the smallest mistake, sometimes a company rebrand means you have no choice.

You can never guarantee that your website will retain its existing rankings when you migrate it to a new URL, even if you set up 301 redirects across the whole website. It’s highly likely that Google will respect the redirect and pass the majority of your existing site’s “link juice” to the new domain, but Google also has a mind of its own.

However, if you’re a publisher and you use Google AdSense, you’ll have another major concern – not losing ad revenue during the migration.

If you’re going to move to a new domain, you’ll want to do it without losing any Google AdSense revenue. But is that possible?


Remarkably, there is no way to simply change the URL of a site on Google AdSense!

It seems remarkable that a service as big as AdSense doesn’t simply let you keep your account active while changing the primary domain, but that’s sadly the current situation.

If you want to move an existing approved site to a new URL / domain, you have to submit that new URL for approval.

You could have been on Google AdSense for years, earning thousands of dollars a month, but it makes no difference – you will have to apply as if it were a brand new website, then wait for it to be approved, just like any other new website.

To make matters worse, it currently takes roughly 2-4 weeks for Google to approve sites, meaning you could be without ad revenue for all of that time.

Worse still, if your site is rejected or “Action is Needed,” it’ll be another 2-4 weeks for Google to reconsider you after submitting an approval request.


How to change your URL on Google AdSense?

So if there’s no easy way to simply change the URL of a currently approved website, what’s the best way to do it?

We walk you through the ‘official’ way, then suggest an alternative option which could allow you to change the URL without losing ad revenue.

Move your site to the new URL then reapply

It’s painful, but the only official way change an AdSense site’s URL is to complete your domain migration then re-apply to AdSense with the new domain.

  1. Migrate your site
    Exactly how you do this is up to you.
  2. Set up 301 redirects from your old domain to your new domain
    Presuming you’ve kept your site structure the same, you can redirect everything from https://www.olddomain.com/ to https://www.newdomain.com/
  3. Reapply to AdSense
    Go to Sites > New Site from within AdSense and enter your new URL. Within 2-6 weeks, Google will review your new domain and let you know whether you’ve been approved.

While you’re waiting for approval, you should keep the ad initiation code live on your new website. However, your site will not serve ads and you won’t earn any ad revenue during this time.

If you have hard-coded ad units rather than Google’s Auto Ads, these ad units will still take up the same space as before, but will display as empty gaps.

You may want to consider removing the hard-coded units during the approval process, while keeping your code snippet between the <head></head> tags.

Alternative Option – Duplicate your existing website and apply

Google not allowing you to chance the address of an existing AdSense site seems counterintuitive, as both you and Google face losing weeks of ad revenue as you want for your new domain to be approved.

There is an alternative technique, which seems like the most logical option – though it didn’t work when we tested it.

Make an exact replica of your existing website, prevent Google Search from indexing it, and apply to AdSense.

This way, AdSense will be able to see all of the content on your new domain, deduce that your site is worthy of being on the ad network, and approve you.

You can then complete the migration by setting up a 301 redirect from https://www.olddomain.com to https://www.newdomain.com, being sure to remember to allow Google to index the new site.

While this seemed like a logical and innovative solution, it simply didn’t work for us.

Google rejected our new website URL on two separate occasions. Whether it was a coincidence or not, we’ll likely never know.

 

 

 


If you know of another way or workaround to change a site URL in Google AdSense, let us know in the comments below.