Anyone help me diagnose my website?

[Chiefhunter22]

I migrated my photography static website(which was doing 350K/mo) to a custom website, now its zero.

1. I've migrated from Pixieset to building my own custom code(astro)
2. I've updated my sitemap.xml and theyre all correct.
3. I've also re-indexed and it says they're all indexed in google, and they've all landed in the same sites, no headlines or paragraphs, words, and photos were touched, just your classic migration.
4. I used vscode, and of course used Codex to help me build but for astro components and simple deployments
5. I've also checked my security/manual issues on GSC and there were no issues.

I've gone from ranking 3-7th on my desired keywords, now, i no longer show at all on google.

please help! I am definitely willing to tip. for any helpful advice!

 

[Rinxa SEO]

Check proper 301 redirects, canonical/meta tags, crawl & index issues — migration error likely.

 

[Chiefhunter22]

1. 301 redirects are checked. actually, the migration was 1 to 1, so it wasnt needed.
2. canonical/meta tags are checked as well
3. crawl & index are all accounted for.


i have a hunch that its the fact that i used astro as my stack.

 

[dataminerx]

Hey, I’ve been in the same boat after a site migration sometimes the biggest issues turn out to be missing 301 redirects or messed up internal links after the move. I’d start by checking crawl errors and comparing indexed pages before/after. What CMS are you using, and did you keep the URL structure the same?

 

[Xpeztum]

Is your content readable? Perhaps some javascript is causing your content not to be readable by google?

 

[dropmeta]

A drop like that after migration is usually technical check robots.txt, noindex tags, canonical URLs, redirects (301s), and whether your new site structure changed internal linking or URL paths. Also compare Core Web Vitals and crawl errors in Google Search Console to spot anything blocking rankings.

 

[Ben Arthur]

Google may see your Astro site as new. Make sure content renders, headings/alt tags are intact, links work, and URLs return 200. Rankings should recover once issues are fixed.

 

[gardian2]

can you link your website to have a look?

 

[Gregory Joyce]

Redirects (VERY important) Did you 301 redirect every old Pixieset URL to its exact new URL? Even small mismatches can wipe rankings.

 

[pawanwebs]

I migrated my photography static website(which was doing 350K/mo) to a custom website, now its zero.

1. I've migrated from Pixieset to building my own custom code(astro)
2. I've updated my sitemap.xml and theyre all correct.
3. I've also re-indexed and it says they're all indexed in google, and they've all landed in the same sites, no headlines or paragraphs, words, and photos were touched, just your classic migration.
4. I used vscode, and of course used Codex to help me build but for astro components and simple deployments
5. I've also checked my security/manual issues on GSC and there were no issues.

I've gone from ranking 3-7th on my desired keywords, now, i no longer show at all on google.

please help! I am definitely willing to tip. for any helpful advice!

You migrated the static website to a custom build, and I’m sure you changed the layout and content. That was the mistake—now Google is treating it as a completely new website.

 

[ProNo]

I migrated my photography static website(which was doing 350K/mo) to a custom website, now its zero.

1. I've migrated from Pixieset to building my own custom code(astro)
2. I've updated my sitemap.xml and theyre all correct.
3. I've also re-indexed and it says they're all indexed in google, and they've all landed in the same sites, no headlines or paragraphs, words, and photos were touched, just your classic migration.
4. I used vscode, and of course used Codex to help me build but for astro components and simple deployments
5. I've also checked my security/manual issues on GSC and there were no issues.

I've gone from ranking 3-7th on my desired keywords, now, i no longer show at all on google.

please help! I am definitely willing to tip. for any helpful advice!

Do a Google search for "Google Sandbox", this is designed by Google for all NEW Website owners, I think you are here, it is a holding bay where ranking will not happen for a while.

Google does not say yes or no whether one exists but I’m with the Yes camp on Sandbox.

 

[ads studio]

I migrated my photography static website(which was doing 350K/mo) to a custom website, now its zero.

1. I've migrated from Pixieset to building my own custom code(astro)
2. I've updated my sitemap.xml and theyre all correct.
3. I've also re-indexed and it says they're all indexed in google, and they've all landed in the same sites, no headlines or paragraphs, words, and photos were touched, just your classic migration.
4. I used vscode, and of course used Codex to help me build but for astro components and simple deployments
5. I've also checked my security/manual issues on GSC and there were no issues.

I've gone from ranking 3-7th on my desired keywords, now, i no longer show at all on google.

please help! I am definitely willing to tip. for any helpful advice!

It sounds like you moved things around carefully, however the rapid drop generally means there are problems with indexing or rendering. My advise is to double-check that your new site properly provides content to Google's crawlers (make sure that the rendered page actually has text and images in it), and you might also want to check Core Web Vitals, structured data, and internal linking. Google can lose exposure for a short time if there are even modest modifications in the structure of a page or if material is lazy-loaded. If everything is set up right, a slow recovery is normal.

 

[Chiefhunter22]

Is your content readable? Perhaps some javascript is causing your content not to be readable by google?

Astro uses very minimal javascript.

its basically a very light static html that references components rather writing everything in html.

you create md file, reference that in html.

with astro, you can basically, create your nav, footer, and body components, reuse those and you have a working, completely modular site. no js needed.

 

[gardian2]

You migrated the static website to a custom build, and I’m sure you changed the layout and content. That was the mistake—now Google is treating it as a completely new website.

Google doesn't care much about your layout, as long as the text content is same, it shouldn't be a problem, certainly it shouldn't be treated as a new website, there is probably some deeper problem.

 

[Chiefhunter22]

can you link your website to have a look?

It’s http://www.pinkpenguinstudios.com

Thanks!

 

[gardian2]

It’s www.pinkpenguinstudios.com

Thanks!

SimilarWeb shows that your traffic went up in January (shows roughly 8000 visitors per month). Where do you take the 350K from - from Search Console? If not, what does Search Console show?

 

[Chiefhunter22]

SimilarWeb shows that your traffic went up in January (shows roughly 8000 visitors per month). Where do you take the 350K from - from Search Console? If not, what does Search Console show?

From Search Console, wedding photography is seasonal(March-November) usually this time around the guy preps to propose this month on Valentine’s Day. Usually I have a surge of engagement sessions but zero inquiries happening.

Currently, I’m using Search console, but analytics says it’s all dried up. What I’m seeing though says I’m ranking 2-3 for my core keywords but googling it on multiple devices, it doesn’t seem that way.

I really think my site is dying.

 

[gardian2]

Mind sharing some of the keywords and the page URL you were ranking with for that keyword?

 

[alonelywriter]

Were your old urls ending in a slash because Pixieset URLs usually end with a slash.

And Astro removes the slashes.

If it is not strict 301 then google might think that the pages are all new.

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Google prioritizes the first HTML response. If js component is taking time to load, google is only seeing an empty page which might be leading to your rank drop.

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Sometimes consulting with gemini provides better understanding of the issue with google rankings. Give your problem to gemini and you will find a lot of solutions, i think you will be able to relate to one of them.

 

[sneakySmoker]

I’ll share it on social media to help you get some organic traffic. I assume you have checked robots.txt and made sure there is no .htaccess file with higher priority deeper in the file system. If there is and the redirects are incorrect or if it’s got some strange mod_rewrite code that could contribute to your issue.

DNS is not propagated and there is an A-Record mismatch. Also claude opus 4.6 reports 403 error via googlebot crawler. Your site is blocking google. it is returning 403 errors. You should check your logs in your server.
The DNS propagation problems and I see that you have a bunch of unresolving sub-domains too.
http://leafdns.com/index.cgi?testid=1283073B

wget pinkpenguinstudios.com
--2026-02-16 07:33:04--  http://pinkpenguinstudios.com/
Resolving pinkpenguinstudios.com (pinkpenguinstudios.com)... 104.21.62.133, 172.67.136.44, 2606:4700:3037::6815:3e85, ...
Connecting to pinkpenguinstudios.com (pinkpenguinstudios.com)|104.21.62.133|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://pinkpenguinstudios.com/ [following]
--2026-02-16 07:33:05--  https://pinkpenguinstudios.com/
Connecting to pinkpenguinstudios.com (pinkpenguinstudios.com)|104.21.62.133|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [text/html]
Saving to: ‘index.html’

index.html                        [ <=>                                              ] 171.40K  --.-KB/s    in 0.02s

2026-02-16 07:33:05 (9.45 MB/s) - ‘index.html’ saved [175514]