A few months ago, I heard different things from people who had moved their websites off WordPress. Some said their traffic held. Some said it grew. Others said they lost traffic after the move.
So I decided to test it for myself.
I moved four of my own sites from WordPress to Astro. They are very different sites, from a small property-maintenance site getting a handful of Google clicks to a language-learning site with 140 articles and more than a million search impressions a month.
I kept the important URLs the same and watched what happened in Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and PageSpeed Insights. The automotive site has four months of data. The other three have about one month, so those results are still early.
Site 1: the automotive site
Background
This is a small automotive enthusiast site that is less than two years old. It publishes new articles regularly and was already growing quickly before the migration.
It was the first site I moved, so it has the longest track record of the four.
What I changed
I moved the site from WordPress to Astro while keeping the same domain, content, and important URLs.
This is also the only site where I measured the same eight pages before and after the move using the same speed test and settings.
Before and after
| Search metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Google clicks | 3,663 | 9,454 |
| Search impressions | 517,000 | 1.26 million |
| Ranking pages | 315 | 1,109 |
| Visits | 5,654 | 21,675 |
| Speed metric | WordPress | Astro |
|---|---|---|
| Average speed score | 66 | 97 |
| Average load time | 7.2 seconds | 1.0 second |
| Homepage load time | 15.0 seconds | 0.9 seconds |
Engagement rate fell from 50% to 40%. AI referral visits also increased from 193 to 563.
What happened
The site became much faster and kept growing after the move. The homepage going from 15 seconds to under one second is the clearest result in this whole test.
The traffic numbers need more context. This site was already climbing before I moved it, so I cannot say Astro caused the 158% increase in Google clicks. The migration did not interrupt the growth, but it may not have created it either.
The same applies to the AI referrals. They nearly tripled, but AI traffic is growing across the web and the site’s overall traffic also increased. I cannot link that growth to the migration.
My takeaway from Site 1 is simple: the speed improvement was real, and the migration did not stop a site that was already growing.
Site 2: the property-maintenance site
Background
This is a small property-maintenance information site focused on preventing bird-related damage. It was getting very little traffic from Google and had already lost most of its search visibility months before I moved it.
I migrated it about one month ago.
What I changed
I moved the site from WordPress to Astro and kept its important URLs in place. I did not save a proper speed baseline before deleting the old WordPress version.
Before and after
| Search metric | Old site | New site |
|---|---|---|
| Google clicks | 5 | 9 |
| Ranking pages | 37 | 118 |
What happened
Clicks went up 80%, but that sounds much more impressive than it is. The actual change was four clicks.
The increase in ranking pages is worth watching, but this site was already trying to recover from an earlier drop. I cannot separate the migration from that recovery, and one month is not enough time to call it a success.
For now, the result is inconclusive. I need to check it again after another six months.
Site 3: the travel site
Background
This is a small travel information site. It had very little visibility in Google before the move and was the weakest site in the test from a search perspective.
It has been on Astro for about one month.
What I changed
I moved the site from WordPress to Astro, but I made a basic measurement mistake before I started: Google Search Console was never connected to the old site.
That means I have no before-and-after search data. Google’s record starts on the day the Astro site went live.
Before and after
| Engagement result | Change |
|---|---|
| Page views | Up 245% |
| Pages per visit | 2.5 to 3.5 |
| Google search comparison | Unavailable |
What happened
People are viewing more pages and going deeper into the site after the move. That is encouraging, but it does not tell me what happened to its Google rankings.
The migration may have gone fine, but the experiment was badly set up. Connecting Search Console would have taken five minutes, and there is no way to recreate that missing history now.
The lesson from Site 3 is to connect Search Console and save your baseline before touching the old site.
Site 4: the language-learning site
Background
This was the biggest and riskiest migration. The site has years of history, 140 articles, more than a million search impressions a month, and hundreds of pages bringing in traffic.
This is the kind of site where a bad migration could hurt a real business. I moved it about one month ago.
What I changed
I moved all 140 articles from WordPress to Astro while keeping the important URLs the same. Then I compared the month before and after the move.
At first, the result looked bad. Google clicks were down 23%.
Before and after
| Period | Clicks before and after | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2026, when I migrated | 5,741 to 4,405 | Down 23% |
| 2025, same calendar days | 12,163 to 9,571 | Down 21% |
Search Console still showed 964 ranking URLs after the move. No articles disappeared from Google, and the average ranking position improved slightly.
What happened
The site normally loses about a fifth of its Google clicks at this time of year. It is a language-learning site, and fewer people study during the summer.
The year I migrated, clicks fell 23%. During the same dates the year before, when there was no migration, they fell 21%.
I also checked the daily traffic around the migration and two Google core updates. There was no sudden drop on any of those dates. The decline was gradual and followed the same shape as the previous year.
One month is still a short window, so I would not claim the migration had zero effect. What I can say is that moving 140 articles did not cause an obvious migration-shaped traffic loss. The site’s pages stayed indexed and kept ranking.
What I learned from all four sites
- Take a baseline first. Save speed scores, Google clicks, ranking pages, top search terms, and engagement numbers before changing anything.
- Connect Search Console and analytics before the move. You cannot recreate missing history later.
- Keep important URLs the same. Changing the platform and URL structure at the same time creates two risks and makes problems harder to diagnose.
- Compare the same dates from the previous year. Month-to-month numbers can make normal seasonality look like a migration problem.
- Give the results time. One month can show whether something went badly wrong, but it is not enough to prove long-term growth.
Would I move them again?
Yes, but not because I think Astro guarantees more traffic. It does not.
I would do it again because the sites are faster and easier for me to update and maintain. My biggest concern was losing the Google visibility they already had. So far, I have not seen an obvious ranking loss caused by the migrations.
This is still a small test. It is four sites, and three of them have only been on Astro for about a month. I will keep watching them and update the results when there is more data.
If you want to see how I handled the move, I wrote up the full WordPress-to-Astro process. If you would rather have someone handle it for you, I also offer a website migration service.