Post-acquisition 90-day checklist

Any change to hosting, domain configuration, or URL structure can trigger a re-crawl that temporarily (or permanently, if done incorrectly) tanks rankings — search engines treat unexpected technical changes as a signal to re-evaluate the site. The most common mistake is migrating hosting or making URL changes in the same week as the ownership transfer without first confirming 301 redirects and canonical tags are intact, which compounds two risky changes into one unmonitored event.

Everything: hosting/server admin, domain registrar, payment processor, CMS/admin logins, third-party tool accounts (email platform, ad accounts, analytics), and any API keys used by the business. Do this within the first few days once you've confirmed you have working access yourself — leaving seller access live for weeks "just in case" is the most common way post-acquisition disputes turn into security incidents.

Uptime and error rates (to catch anything broken by the transfer itself), organic traffic and rankings for your top pages (to catch SEO fallout early), and revenue against the pre-acquisition baseline (to catch problems with payment processing or checkout that wouldn't show up in a general uptime check). Set explicit thresholds — for example, a 10% week-over-week traffic drop — so you're not relying on gut feel to notice a problem.

Yes — "business takeover" and "post-acquisition" describe the same transition period: the weeks right after ownership changes hands, whether through a purchase, a merger, or a succession. Whatever you call it, you need the same infrastructure transfer, access revocation, SEO continuity, and monitoring steps covered here, so this checklist works for any of those scenarios.