Completely redesigned webmaster - set up new site in Google Webmaster Tools, or keep existing??

[Jenny1]

Hi - our company just completely redesigned our website and went from a static HTML site to a PHP based site, so every single URL has changed (around 1500 pages). I put the same verification code into the new site and re-verified but now Google is listing tons and tons of 404's. Some of them are really old pages that haven't existing in a long time, it would literally be impossible to create all the redirects for the 404s it's pulling.

Question - when completely changing a site like this, should I have created a whole new Search Console? Or did I do the right thing by using the existing one?

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

No, don't create a new Search Console.
Upload a sitemap that is updated with the new URLs and make sure to have an correctly optimized 404 error page.

Here, some Best practices for error pages - Moz Academy

Best Luck!
GR.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hey!

You can add a new one but it wouldn't make any sense as the data is still the same for the old site so you can just keep on going with this one and update a lot of stuff in there so your new site will validate better.

Martijn.