Website migration points occur. You propose, create a staging web site, after which when the location goes stay, there’s certain to be one thing fallacious.
High quality assurance will get thrust into overdrive the second that migrations are full.
You sift via 1000’s of pages, metadata, and extra to repair any issues earlier than another person notices.
It’s a number of work and time-consuming to really feel assured {that a} web site migration is full with out points.
However, I’m going to indicate you how you can establish migration points rapidly utilizing Google Sheets and AI. You continue to have loads to do (migration specialists, rejoice!), however this script goes that will help you:
- Examine outdated and new ScreamingFrog crawls.
- Establish speedy points that you should resolve.
SEOs have their very own methods and practices that they observe, and this script goes to let you QA migrations rapidly primarily based by yourself necessities.
You may adapt the script under to make this give you the results you want, whether or not you’re engaged on a small native enterprise web site or an enterprise.
Setting Every thing Up With Screaming Frog And Google Sheets
I’m utilizing Screaming Frog for this instance as a result of it makes it straightforward for me to export knowledge for each websites.
We’re going to imagine the next:
- Your first model is your stay web site, which we’ll name the Previous Crawl.
- Your second model is your new web site on a staging atmosphere, which we’ll name New Crawl.
You’re going to create a Google Sheets with the next Sheets:
- Overview.
- Previous Crawl.
- New Crawl.
As soon as your Sheet is about up correctly, run your ScreamingFrog scan utilizing any settings that you just like.
You’ll run the scan in your Previous and New Crawl after which inmport the information to the Previous Crawl and New Crawl tabs in your Sheets.
Your sheets will look one thing like this:
The New Crawl will look very related.
When you fill in each the New and Previous Crawl sheets, you’ll have to populate your Overview sheet.
The desk that you just create on this sheet ought to include the next columns:
- Current (outdated) URL.
- New URL.
- Standing Code.
- Indexability.
- Title 1.
- Meta Description 1.
- H1-1.
- H2-1.
- Column 3.
- Column 4.
Your Overview sheet will look one thing like this:
Migration QA Overview Sheet (Screenshot of Google Sheet, March 2025)After you have your sheets arrange, it’s time to place your favourite AI to work to check your knowledge.
I used ChatGPT, however you need to use any AI you want. I’m certain Claude, Deepseek, or Gemini would do equally as properly so long as you employ related prompts.
Prompts To Create Your Google Sheets Information
You may fill in your Google Sheet formulation by hand in case you’re a method guru, nevertheless it’s simpler to let AI do it for you since we’re making fundamental comparisons.
Keep in mind, the Previous Crawl is the stay web site, and the New Crawl is my staging web site.
Now, go to your AI software and immediate it with the next:
I want a Google Sheets method that compares values between two sheets: "Previous Crawl" and "New Crawl." The method ought to:
Search for a worth in column A of "Previous Crawl" utilizing the worth in column A of the present sheet.
Search for a worth in column A of "New Crawl" utilizing the worth in column B of the present sheet.
Discover the corresponding column in each sheets by matching the column header in row 1 with the present column header.
If the values match, return "Cross".
If they do not match, return "Error (oldnew)" with the differing values proven.
Use TEXTJOIN("", TRUE, ...) to format the error message.
Guarantee compatibility with Google Sheets by specifying specific ranges as an alternative of full-column references.You may regulate these immediate factors by yourself.
For instance, you may change “Previous Crawl” to “Stay Website,” however make sure that the sheet names match up correctly.
ChatGPT generated code for me that appears one thing like this:
=IF(
INDEX('Previous Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($A2, 'Previous Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'Previous Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)) =
INDEX('New Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($B2, 'New Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'New Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)),
"Cross",
"Error (" & TEXTJOIN("", TRUE,
IFERROR(INDEX('Previous Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($A2, 'Previous Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'Previous Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)), ""),
IFERROR(INDEX('New Crawl'!$A$1:$Z$1000, MATCH($B2, 'New Crawl'!$A$1:$A$1000, 0), MATCH(C$1, 'New Crawl'!$1:$1, 0)), "")
) & ")"
)
You should utilize these fundamental formulation to start out evaluating rows by pasting the method in row 2.
Including the method is so simple as double-clicking the sphere and pasting it in.
I do know that you just’ll need to make this a bit extra complicated. You are able to do a number of issues with Google Sheets and formulation, so tweak issues as wanted.
Concepts For Increasing Your Migration Sheet
Your formulation will rely on the settings of your Screaming Frog crawl, however listed here are just a few that I believe will work properly:
- Create a perform to check all the standing codes between the Previous Crawl and New Crawl to establish key points that exist. For instance, if a web page has something however a 200 code, you may spotlight the difficulty to repair it rapidly.
- Add a method to focus on metadata that’s too lengthy or quick, so to add it to your job listing for when the audit is over.
- Create a perform to observe Response Time between each the Previous and New Crawl so to establish any points that the brand new crawl could have or report pace will increase if switching to a brand new host or server.
- Create one other perform to check the URL construction of every URL. You may evaluate trailing slashes, construction and extra.
- Develop a brand new perform for Inlinks to make sure that no inside hyperlinks have been misplaced within the migration. You can too test exterior hyperlinks utilizing the identical idea.
Migrating a web site is all the time tedious.
Plenty of QA goes into the method, and whereas vital, the idea above will make the method a lot simpler.
You can too use AI to suggest additional enhancements to your newly migrated web site.
How would you enhance this file or its performance?
Extra Assets:
Featured Picture: TarikVision/Shutterstock
