There is a possibility to change the SharePoint online site address of an existing site by a SharePoint admin or Global admin. There are different options to change the site URL from

1. SharePoint Admin center
2. SharePoint online management shell

I’ve recently faced a scenario recently, after renaming a site URL https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/site1 to https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/site2 from the Admin center I was still not able to use the url https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/site1 while trying to create another site though the url has to be available. I’ve tried to create the site from the SharePoint start page & SharePoint admin center, I was getting one of the following message

• The site address is unavailable
• Couldn’t create the site, please go back and try again.

SharePoint Online PowerShell to the rescue, run the following command as an Administrator after creating a site with some address from the start page or admin center to rename the URL

Connect-SPOService -Url https://tenant-admin.sharepoint.com/
Start-SPOSiteRename -Identity https://tenant.sharepoint.com/sites/someaddress -NewSiteUrl https://m365pal.sharepoint.com/sites/site1

Hope you have found this informational & thanks for reading. If you are visiting my blog for the first time, please do look at my other blogposts.