Map old URLs before changing your storefront.

Keep an inventory of useful destinations

Collect the old product, category, policy and article URLs. Add a column for the intended new destination and one for the decision: preserve, redirect, merge or retire. Prioritize pages customers already use and links included in email or printed material.

Avoid sending every old page to the homepage. Someone following a product link expects that product or a closely relevant destination, not a new search task.

Review the mapping with examples

Suppose /shop/example-5mg becomes /products/example. Confirm the new page includes the intended variant and that the redirect reaches it without an unnecessary chain. If two old pages merge, check that the combined page genuinely serves both purposes.

Google’s site-move guidance recommends mapping URLs and using permanent server-side redirects for moved pages. Test the actual response and final content, not only whether the browser appears to load something.

• Check links with and without a trailing slash.
• Update internal navigation to the new destinations.
• Keep a record of intentionally retired content.
• Test the highest-value old URLs after launch.

Monitor the transition

A migration can change search performance while engines process the move. Review crawl errors and the indexed destinations using the relevant webmaster tools. Do not promise an instant ranking improvement because the design looks better.

Keep this worksheet alongside your Torva migration preparation. The scanner is still in development, and a URL list alone does not mean redirects have been created or verified on your production host.

Sources

• Google Search Central: site moves with URL changes ↗