Changing Servers Without Losing.

[Theinc]

backlinks, PageRank and search engine rankings?

Is there anything that needs to be done similar to when changing domains or can you just go ahead and change servers without consequence?

[zulu_dude]

As far as I know, there should be no problem when changing servers.

Your backlinks link to your domain, not your IP address... ditto with PageRank and rankings. Although you might find a slight change in your rankings over time if your new server's IP is in a different geographic area to your previous server.

[lammert]

when changing domains

Changing domain DOES harm SE rankings, backlinks etc. Can you be more precise about what you are going to do? Is the content from your current site moving to a new domainname, or is the content moved to another hosting facility and do you change the DNS settings of your current domain? The first will bring you in the Google sandbox, the second will have no consequences in most circumstances. The only change might be country targeting if you are moving your hosting to another country.

[zulu_dude]

Apologies for my initial misleading reply- I read the original question too quickly and didn't see the bit about about changing domains.

Lammert is quite right- changing domains would have a massive effect.

[trillianjedi]

zulu_dude - I think you read it correctly actually.

If it's just a straight server switch, change of IP address, then no problem.

Just be sure to run both servers until you see the bots crawling the new IP address.

TJ

[lammert]

Yep, my fault. I overlooked the "similar to" words.

If only the IP changes and everything else stays the same there won't be any problems, unless the site is targeting a specific country in which case it is good to have a server IP inside that country.