Site Moves Get a Warning Label
The practical SEO story today is domain migrations. Google updated its site move guidance on June 17 to say domain moves work best when all variants are migrated properly, including subdomains, www, and non-www versions. Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal all picked this up today because missed variants can leave Google with messy signals during a move.
For a non-technical site owner, this means: if example.com moves to a new domain, do not only tell Google about the main version. Verify and submit the old www, non-www, and relevant subdomain versions in Search Console’s Change of Address tool. This is boring admin work, but skipping it can turn a normal migration into a ranking fog bank.
AI Visibility Debate Keeps Rolling
Search Engine Land also spotlighted Google’s new AI opt-out controls and argued that opting out may simply remove your brand from AI Overviews or AI Mode while competitors remain eligible to appear. That matters because Google’s earlier Search Central announcement said its new generative AI reports in Search Console show impressions, pages, countries, devices, and dates for AI visibility, though only for a subset of sites for now.
Meanwhile, Search Engine Journal covered Google’s pushback on llms.txt, with John Mueller saying discovery and ranking are still tied to normal HTML pages, not a special AI text file.
SERP Weather
Rankings are cooling but not perfectly calm. Yesterday finished at 5.6/10, while today’s partial read is 4.5/10 with mixed provider signals. The trend is drifting down after repeated mid-level bounces.
Bottom Line
- If moving domains, verify every variant before using Change of Address.
- Do not chase llms.txt as an AI ranking shortcut.
- Treat AI reporting as directional, not complete.
