It is normal to see ranking fluctuations in the first 4 to 6 weeks after a migration as Google recrawls and re-evaluates the new site. Minor drops of 2 to 5 positions on individual keywords are typical. A wholesale drop of 20+ positions across multiple high-value pages in the first week is abnormal and indicates a technical issue (crawl error, noindex leak, incorrect canonicals).
Track daily: Google Search Console impressions and clicks (compare to pre-migration baseline), crawl errors in the GSC Coverage report, 404 errors (any new 404s indicate missing redirects) and server response codes. Index coverage should grow or stay stable — a decline in indexed pages indicates crawlability issues.
Intervene immediately if: impressions drop more than 30% versus pre-migration in week 2; a high-value page drops out of the top 50 completely; GSC reports a spike in 404 errors; or the robots.txt accidentally blocks Googlebot. For smaller drops, allow 6 weeks before changing anything — the algorithm needs time to process the migration before you can distinguish real problems from normal volatility.
A migration only costs rankings when it is rushed or unplanned. With a full URL map, clean 301 redirects, preserved on-page signals and careful monitoring, you can move a site and hold or even improve its visibility.
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TPR Media explains post-migration SEO ranking monitoring: normal volatility patterns (2 to 5 position fluctuation is normal, 20+ is not), the daily metrics to track in GSC for the first 4 weeks, and the intervention thresholds that distinguish real problems from migration reprocessing noise.