A move changes more than one address
A customer follows yesterday's directions and arrives at the old premises. Google Maps shows the new address, but the website footer and an industry directory still show the former one. An AI answer repeats whichever version its sources support. The business is open, yet its public record looks uncertain.
This guide covers one continuing business moving one operating location. Branch openings and closures, acquisitions, legal entity changes and domain moves need their own migration plan. If the move also changes the name or domain, use the broader business rebrand migration guide.
The aim is accurate continuity, not a promise of unchanged visibility. Google says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. A new address changes the distance between the business, its customers and its competitors. Rankings can therefore change even when every controlled update is correct.
Website edits, profile changes and correction requests provide better evidence. Outcomes such as uninterrupted visibility, preserved rankings, review transfer, verification timing, Knowledge Panel updates and AI answers remain outside the business's control. If the move exposes wider confusion about the business rather than a contained address problem, first diagnose how search and AI systems understand your business.
Decide which facts are actually changing
An operating move doesn't make every address the same. Approve each address by purpose before asking teams to update systems.
| Address type | Purpose and destination | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Customer location | Customer visits, website, maps and local profiles | Operations and marketing |
| Service area | Travel or delivery area, Business Profile and service pages | Operations and profile owner |
| Principal place of business | Main place the company conducts business, recorded with ASIC | Company officeholder |
| Registered office | Official correspondence address, recorded with ASIC | Company officeholder or adviser |
| Mailing address | Correspondence, invoices and supplier records | Administration |
| Private residential address | Restricted records where required | Authorised legal owner |
ASIC explains that an Australian company's registered office and principal place of business are distinct records. Neither is automatically the customer-facing location used on a website or map. Give company-record decisions to an authorised officeholder, accountant or legal adviser when applicability is unclear.
The public profile must also match the operating model. Google's current service-area business guidance says a business that doesn't serve customers at its address should remove the address from its Business Profile and enter its service area. Don't expose a private residence as a storefront when customers aren't received there.
Write one approved relocation record with the old and new values, the effective date and the owner for each address type. A team can't coordinate the move if “the business address” means a different fact to operations, marketing and the company officeholder.
Capture the baseline before anything changes
A baseline lets you distinguish a failed update from the commercial effect of serving a different geography. Capture it before a staged website edit, profile submission or directory request changes the evidence.
- Record the approved old and new facts, the effective date and the person authorised to approve each fact.
- Confirm access to the website, domain, Google Business Profile, analytics, Search Console, key directories and any location data provider the business controls.
- Save the current profile URL, verification state, categories, address or service area, phone, hours, reviews and linked website page.
- Capture priority website pages, rendered structured data, indexed address mentions and important third-party records.
- Save meaningful search and conversion measures by geography, including representative local queries, calls, forms, bookings and direction requests where available.
- Assign an owner, evidence field and follow-up date to every surface that must change.
Keep geographic context in the baseline. Search from locations that represent real customer demand and preserve the measurement location. After the move, a result sampled near the former premises isn't directly comparable with one sampled near the new premises.
The business information monitoring framework provides the full method for recording intended facts, observed values, evidence and review ownership. Use it here as the relocation control record, not as another reporting dashboard.
Prepare the website and profile changes
Stage the controlled website changes before the public effective date. Review the location or contact page, footer, About page, directions, embedded map, opening hours, phone details, forms, appointment confirmations and downloadable documents. Search the site for the complete old address and recognisable variations rather than assuming one template controls every mention.
If the location page URL changes, map the old URL to the closest useful new destination and prepare a permanent redirect. Update internal links, canonicals and the XML sitemap. Preserve a stable URL when its purpose and the continuing location record remain clear. A move alone doesn't require a new page path.
Visible facts and structured data should change together. Google's Organization structured-data documentation supports applicable address details and directs local operations to its LocalBusiness guidance. Use the LocalBusiness schema guide for real locations and service areas for storefront, privacy, multi-location and JSON-LD decisions rather than improvising markup during launch week.
Prepare the existing Business Profile too. Confirm that the right people can sign in and that the profile links to the correct location page. Collect truthful evidence of the new premises and operating arrangement in case Google requests it. The current profile editing guidance says a verified business that moves to a new address must verify again. The available method and completion time can vary, so treat access and evidence as launch dependencies.
Keep the move plan focused on relocation facts. Categories, services, photos and ongoing measurement belong in the Google Business Profile guide. Change them during the relocation only when the underlying business fact also changed.
Coordinate the effective date
The effective date is when the new location becomes true for customers. Coordinate the controlled updates around that date instead of releasing contradictory facts over several weeks.
- Publish the approved website location facts and confirm that directions, contact routes, forms and conversion tracking work.
- Deploy any location-page redirect, then check its destination, status, canonical and internal links.
- Validate the visible address and rendered structured data on priority pages.
- Update the existing Google Business Profile with the new address or correct service-area configuration.
- Start any required re-verification and record the method, submission evidence, owner and current status.
- Update other profiles and accounts the business controls, then begin the prioritised external correction queue.
- Notify ASIC and other relevant authorities through the authorised owner where the corresponding statutory fact changed.
- Record the visible outcome of each action rather than treating submission as completion.
Don't create a new Business Profile merely because the same business changed physical location. Google's review relocation guidance explicitly says not to create a new profile for a physical-location or ownership change. It says reviews for a relocated business with the same name transfer automatically, with exceptions for some categories. Treat that as the current platform rule, not a guarantee for every case.
Australian companies have a separate statutory clock. ASIC says relevant company address changes must be reported within 28 days to avoid late fees. That requirement can apply to the registered office, principal place of business and certain personal or member addresses. It doesn't mean every marketing profile should display those records.
Correct the wider web in priority order
Once controlled sources show the approved facts, correct external sources according to customer impact and likely influence. Start with map providers, major directories, industry profiles, review platforms, social accounts and partner pages that buyers use. Then work through other maintained references and indexed address mentions.
Prioritise by customer harm and source influence. An old address on a high-visibility directory that sends customers to the wrong place is more urgent than a dated event page that accurately describes the business at that time. The third-party business signal audit explains how to inventory, assess and request corrections across sources.
A shared register prevents a submitted change from being mistaken for a verified result. It also keeps the correction trail usable when a directory asks for more evidence or republishes stale data.
Handle reviews and old-address remnants carefully
Keep the existing Business Profile when one continuing business moves. A duplicate can split customer activity and create another record that needs resolution. If somebody already created and verified a new profile because of the move, Google's review relocation guidance directs businesses to contact support about transferring reviews from the old profile.
Check what is actually wrong before escalating. The profile may show the right address while an old map feature, third-party directory or organic result still shows the former location. Save the URL, query, date, screenshot and correct source before requesting a change. Don't repeatedly edit an accurate profile because another system hasn't caught up.
Treat review continuity as qualified, not guaranteed. Google's guidance allows automatic transfer for a relocated business that retains its name, but identifies category exceptions and says not all business changes qualify. A simultaneous name, category, ownership or entity change needs a wider eligibility review.
When an old address persists across several surfaces, trace which evidence layer is stale. The problem may sit on the website, structured data, a duplicate profile, a directory or another indexed source. That diagnosis is more useful than describing every remnant as a Maps problem.
Measure the new location as a new market
Check the customer journey immediately after launch. Confirm the website address, directions, phone, forms, profile status, verification messages and prominent external records. Search the brand with the old and new suburbs and inspect the pages that could send somebody to the wrong place.
Review progress at 30, 60 and 90 days. These are Off Piste management checkpoints, not Google processing estimates.
- At 30 days, check verification status, indexed website facts, important listings, redirects, calls, forms, bookings and obvious old-address results.
- At 60 days, repeat representative local searches from recorded locations, review correction requests and compare discovery and conversion patterns with geographic context.
- At 90 days, close verified corrections, escalate material remnants, document the new baseline and move stable facts into recurring monitoring.
Google's local ranking explanation makes the interpretation important. Distance has changed, and the surrounding competitors and search demand may also differ. Compare like locations and queries where possible. A drop near the old premises can reflect the completed move, while weak visibility near the new premises may require a separate diagnosis.
Sample AI answers and search features only as observations. Record the prompt, location where relevant, output, cited sources and date. An answer that repeats the old address shows a buyer-facing discrepancy. It doesn't prove which source caused the answer or when it will change.
Know when the move needs a broader migration plan
This checklist is ready to use when the same business, name, domain and operating model continue at one new location. The team should be able to approve each address type, access every controlled system, prepare verification evidence, assign every action and preserve a geographically meaningful baseline before the effective date.
Stop and broaden the plan if the event also creates a new branch, closes another location, changes the business name or domain, changes the legal entity, follows an acquisition, or turns a storefront into a materially different service model. Those changes affect eligibility, identity, architecture or continuity beyond one address update.
The useful readiness decision is simple. Can one accountable owner show what changes, when it becomes true, where it must appear and how the visible result will be verified? If not, the business isn't ready to publish the move across search-facing systems.
An SEO relocation readiness review can help when access, profile eligibility, website changes, external corrections and measurement need one coordinated owner. Begin before the public edit. The most valuable work happens while the team can still establish the baseline and remove launch dependencies.