After Company Rebrand + Domain Migration, Bing/Google Only Index Homepage: Technical Solutions

A domain migration following a company rebrand is one of the most complex tasks an SEO or webmaster can undertake. A common and alarming symptom during this transition is when the Google Search web application and Bing Webmaster Tools index the new homepage quickly, but the rest of the site's internal pages remain stuck in "Discovered - currently not indexed" for weeks.

If your deep pages are not surfacing, you are likely facing a bottleneck in crawl signals or authority transfer. Here is how to diagnose and fix the issue.

1. Verify the 301 Redirect Mapping (1:1 vs. Wildcard)

Search engines need to see a clear path from the old URL to the new URL to pass "Link Equity."

• The Mistake: Many developers redirect all old URLs to the new homepage (a "lazy" wildcard). Google treats this as a Soft 404, and it will not pass the authority needed to index your new internal pages.
• The Fix: Ensure a strict 1:1 mapping. old-site.com/services must 301 redirect to new-site.com/services. Use the curl -I command to verify that your headers are returning a 301, not a 302.

2. The "Dual Sitemap" Strategy

To accelerate discovery, you need to signal to the web application bots that the entire structure has moved. A common mistake is deleting the old sitemap immediately.

1. Keep the old domain's sitemap live in Google Search Console. This forces the bots to crawl the old URLs and discover the 301 redirects.
2. Submit the new domain's sitemap simultaneously.
3. This creates a "crawl bridge" that helps the Google Search algorithm reconcile the two domains faster.

3. Update the "Change of Address" Tool

Both Google and Bing provide specific tools for domain migrations. If you haven't used them, the search engines may view the two sites as separate entities competing for the same content (duplicate content).

• In Google Search Console, use the Change of Address tool under Settings.
• In Bing Webmaster Tools, use the Site Move tool.
• This explicitly tells the engines that the "Identity" of the brand has moved, prioritizing the new domain for a site-wide crawl.

4. Check for Internal Link "Legacy" Issues

If your new site still contains hardcoded internal links pointing to the old domain, you are wasting your crawl budget. The bot hits the new page, sees a link to the old domain, follows the 301 redirect, and ends up back where it started.

• Perform a database "search and replace" to ensure all internal HTML links point to the current web application domain.
• Check your Canonical Tags. If your new pages have canonicals pointing back to the old domain, they will never be indexed.

5. Re-establishing E-E-A-T and Discovery

A new domain has zero "Crawl Demand" initially. If your internal pages aren't indexing, Google may not yet trust the new domain's authority (E-E-A-T).

• Internal Linking: Ensure your homepage (the only indexed page) links prominently to your top-tier category pages.
• External Signals: Update your high-authority social profiles (LinkedIn, Twitter) and your Google Business Profile. These "seed" links provide the initial trust needed for a deep crawl.
• URL Inspection: Use the "Request Indexing" tool on 2-3 key internal pages. If they index within 24 hours, the issue is a crawl discovery problem, not a quality penalty.

Conclusion

If Google and Bing are only indexing your homepage after a rebrand, it is a sign that the crawl bridge between the old and new domains is broken. By implementing 1:1 redirects, maintaining dual sitemaps, and utilizing the official webmaster move tools, you can clear the bottleneck. Patience is required—a full site-wide re-index can take 4 to 8 weeks depending on the size of your web application—but these technical steps ensure your SEO value isn't lost in the move.