Dispensary Website Migration SEO Checklist - Permanent Redirects, Change of Address, Dutchie, Jane and Treez Menu Moves, Domain Switches and Post-Launch Traffic Drop Checks - Bud Authority
Dispensary website migration SEO checklist built on Google's site-move docs: redirects, Change of Address and menu swaps. Run the free audit before launch.
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To move a dispensary website without avoidable traffic loss, classify the move as a new platform, new menu provider, or new domain, then permanently redirect every old URL to its new equivalent on the server. File a Change of Address only for a domain or subdomain move, and change one thing at a time. Google warns rankings may fluctuate during the few weeks a small site usually takes to move.
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Decide which kind of move you are making before you touch a redirect
Sort the move first, because each kind carries different steps. A new platform is a rebuild or a new CMS on the same domain. A new menu provider is a switch between Dutchie, Jane, Treez or another vendor, or between two setups from one vendor. A new domain or subdomain changes the address itself. A project that is two of these at once, such as a rebuild plus a new menu, is two moves, scheduled separately.
| Step | New platform, same domain | New menu provider or menu setup | New domain or subdomain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Map every old URL to its new URL | Every URL that changes | Every menu and product URL that changes | Every URL |
| Permanent server-side redirects (301 or 308) | Where URLs change | Where menu URLs change | Every URL |
| Submit the new sitemap in Search Console | Yes | Yes, if the menu publishes a sitemap | Yes |
| Change of Address in Search Console | No | Possibly: the tool can move a subdomain property, and Google allows a path as the destination; confirm in Search Console | Yes, after redirects are live |
| Clear staging noindex rules and robots.txt blocks at launch | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Expect ranking fluctuation while Google recrawls | Yes | Yes, on menu pages | Yes |
If only the hosting changes and every URL stays the same, most of this table does not apply, and Google's guide for that case says a temporary drop in Googlebot's crawl rate right after launch is normal.
Moves that change URLs need permanent server-side redirects
The redirect map decides how a move goes, so build it before anything else. List every URL the old site has, then write the new URL beside each one: location pages, menu category and product pages, blog posts, and any promotion pages that picked up links. Point each old URL at the closest matching new page, not at the homepage.
Then settle how they are served. Google's site-move guide puts it in one line: "Use server side permanent redirects if technically possible." Ask for a 301 or 308, because "The 301 and 308 status codes mean that a page has permanently moved to a new location." A JavaScript redirect is the last resort: "Only use JavaScript redirects if you can't do server-side or meta refresh redirects." Get your host to confirm which of these the new platform can return before launch day.
Leave the redirects up "for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year."
A domain or subdomain move adds a Change of Address step
A new domain, or a move from one subdomain to another, needs one more step once the redirects are live: "submit a Change of Address in Search Console for the old site." The Change of Address help page sets the conditions:
- Redirect the old homepage to the new homepage with a 301.
- Be an owner of both the old and new properties in Search Console.
- Maintain the redirects for at least 180 days.
The same page lists moves the tool does not handle. It rules out "Changing address from http to https," and states that "You cannot move properties at the path level." A switch to https, or a section moving into a folder on the same domain, runs on redirects and a new sitemap alone.
Swapping menu providers changes where the menu lives
The vendor's setup decides where a dispensary's product pages sit: inside an iframe, on a subdomain, or in a folder on your own domain. Dutchie's documentation does not say what happens to already-indexed menu URLs when a store switches setups, so crawl and save every current menu URL before any switch and start the redirect map from that list.
Dutchie Plus stores have a date.
The company's blog says it is "committed to supporting our legacy Dutchie Plus customers through the end of 2026." Its E-Commerce Pro article asks "Can I move from Dutchie Plus to Pro?" and answers "Yes. We offer a smooth migration path to Pro." If you are still on Plus, treat the move to Pro as a menu-provider move and build its URL map now, so the launch is not squeezed into the last weeks of the year.
Dutchie.
The E-Commerce SEO FAQ describes the embedded menu as an iframe added with one line of code and says it will be partially indexed by Google. The subdomain menu is fully indexed, but the FAQ notes that Google treats subdomains as separate sites. E-Commerce Pro + Proxy, it says, makes the storefront appear as part of your root domain to search engines. Its Cloudflare setup guide loads the storefront as a sub-path such as yourdomain.com/store, and it requires a Cloudflare Workers Paid plan, a domain on Cloudflare, and access granted to Dutchie.
Moving a Dutchie subdomain storefront into a folder
Take a store moving from a subdomain storefront such as menu.yourdispensary.com to Pro + Proxy at yourdomain.com/store. Every menu URL changes, so it needs the full redirect map, and two questions need answers before you set a date.
Who returns the 301s? The custom-domain setup points the subdomain at a Dutchie host with a CNAME record, so requests for the old menu URLs reach Dutchie, not your web host. Get written confirmation of who will serve redirects from the old subdomain paths, and for how long.
Does Change of Address apply? Possibly. Google says the tool works on domain-level properties, which includes a subdomain such as menu.yourdispensary.com, and that a site can be moved to a path within another domain. Google does not say how it treats a subdomain moving into a folder on its own root domain, so plan the move on redirects and a new sitemap, and use Change of Address only if Search Console accepts it for the subdomain property.
A menu on your domain is not yet a menu crawlers can read
The proxy changes the menu's address, not what the page sends before JavaScript runs. On 2026-10-12 Bud Authority requested 9 Dutchie storefronts that already run behind a reverse proxy, using the GPTBot user agent. The median storefront sent 152 KB of HTML holding 2 readable body words, and none of the 9 had an H1 tag, because each one builds the menu in the browser after load. That measures what GPTBot receives, not what Google indexes, but it is reason enough to run the URL Inspection live test (step 3 below) on new menu pages after the move.
Treez, Jane and Sweed
Treez.
Treez documents a reverse proxy that makes the online menu appear as if it is hosted on your own domain. Its guide has the dispensary choose a menu path, such as /menu or /shop, and requires Cloudflare as the DNS provider.
Jane.
It depends on which Jane setup you are leaving. The traditional embed script renders the storefront, menu and checkout included, in an iframe, and Jane's developer documentation says that when Jane loads in an iframe, the URL stays the same. A shop leaving the iframe embed has no per-product addresses on its domain to redirect, so the work is creating and submitting new menu URLs. Boost is different: Jane describes it as a single-page app whose URL changes, and ties Boost's SEO benefit to that. A shop leaving Boost has menu URLs to map, and so does a shop leaving Roots, Jane's headless option for a completely custom menu.
Sweed.
Sweed says it can run standalone or be integrated into an existing site by subdomain or URL path, so the same domain, subdomain and folder logic applies. Ask Sweed for its own move steps before you set a date.
Move one thing at a time and launch all URLs together
Across a project, Google's advice is to "Plan your changes to your site one after the other, not everything at the same time." A new design, a new menu provider and a new domain in one weekend leave no way to tell which change caused a drop.
Within a single move it runs the other way: "Small or medium sites: We recommend moving all URLs on your site simultaneously instead of moving one section at a time." A dispensary rebuilding its site and switching menus would launch the rebuild with every URL redirected on day one, let it settle, and then run the menu switch as its own move. That advice is addressed to small or medium sites, so a very large multi-store menu should not assume it applies.
Budget for the wait. "As a general rule, a small to medium-sized website can take a few weeks for most pages to move," so schedule the launch away from your busiest sales weeks. Submit the new sitemap in Search Console on launch day, since "Submitting a sitemap can help make the discovery process quicker." Once it is in, the old sitemap can be removed, because Google uses the new one going forward.
Before launch, list every page carrying a staging noindex rule and clear those rules, with any robots.txt blocks, on launch day. A forgotten noindex is costly, because Google "will drop that page entirely from Google Search results, regardless of whether other sites link to it."
What to check if traffic dropped after the move
Work through these in order.
- 1Robots and noindex. Open the live robots.txt and a sample of new pages. A noindex can be set by a meta tag or by an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header, so check the response headers as well as the HTML. A noindex only takes effect when the page is not blocked by robots.txt, so check both together.
- 2Redirect status codes. Request a sample of old URLs, including menu and location pages. Each should return a 301 or 308 to its matching new page, since a permanent redirect is what tells Google the new page should be the canonical one.
- 3URL Inspection, read correctly. The URL Inspection tool reports on Google's indexed version of a page, not a live view. Run the live test to see what Googlebot gets from the new URL today.
- 4Page indexing report. Look at the new URLs for the statuses Soft 404 and Duplicate without user-selected canonical.
- 5Sitemap. Confirm the new sitemap is submitted in Search Console and lists the new URLs, not the old ones.
- 6Change of Address, for domain moves. Confirm it was filed for the old property and that the conditions above still hold.
Run the checklist against your own site
Run the free Bud Authority audit once before the move for a baseline and again after launch, then compare the two report cards side by side.
If the move is a rebuild, the dispensary web design and CRO service covers the new site itself. If the move is on the menu side, Bud Authority is a Dutchie Certified Partner, and Dutchie SEO is its service for menu-side search work. For Dutchie menus behind a reverse proxy, Bud Authority runs Apex MenuEdge, which rewrites each menu page as it is served so crawlers receive a server-rendered page while shoppers keep the same live Dutchie menu and checkout.
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