Forum Moderators: phranque
I am in the process of moving a clients web site from one web host to another.
Their domains are hosted by a third company which points a .co.uk and .com to the current site.
Once the site is set up I will ask the domain hosts to point both domains to the one location using a single IP address provided by the web hosting company.
The client is able to leave their old site online while their current contract expires.
My question is: will their search engine postions suffer during the pointing of the domains to the new location?
Will it be the case that in the interim while the DNS cache updates visitors will be directed to the old site and once updated all will be sent to the new site?
Hope it's that easy!
In fact no one will even notice :-)
I have done this several times and each one has maintained positions and rank in Google seamlesly.
May not be necessary say some, but the implications of dropping out for a month are more severe than me wasting a little time.
Good point about Google, particularly as the client in question has top 10 positions against keyphrases.
Time to go to the Google Forum to see when (in theory) they update....
Thanks again for the good advice.
As the bot makes its rounds it will either see the site at the old location if the DNS has not updated at the server(s) from whence it sprang or it will see the new one if it has. It will never be given the opportunity to see the site at both locations and/or not see the site at all.
Since these are the only two things I can think of that would cause it to penalize you, I don't see a problem.
One consideration to note: if absolute URLs are pervailent in the site (e.g. - indicating the domain name -- particularly with images and graphics) vice relative links, after the tranfer occurs the domain itself will be non-existent until each network receives the new IP location.
In this situation it is possible that say a search engine has received the new IP allowing the user to go to the appropriate new host but the ISP the user is actual on is lagging behind.
Although they would be directed to the right IP location they would in fact receive a 404 error, a site with no graphics, no CSS, etc. something other than a full web site.
It is best to make sure all internal links are relative to avoid embarrassment.
From my experience this is never the case... unless you remove the site from the old location before the DNS has finished updating.
Any given internet location will either think the site is at one place or the other. Never both.
Luckily, I'm sure all links are 'relative' - but I'll double check that.
The site has a large amount of extremely high quality links pointing to it (hence one of the reasons why it is doing well in Google). I assume that these incoming, external links will just 'update' once the DNS has been changed and in the meantime will go to the 'old' site, therefore should be no problem?
Thanks again for all your excellent advice and points.
What do you mean by the domain being non-existant?
On major Internet backbones this isn't really a problem, the transfer occurs almost instantaneously. However, with the domain name removed from the old IP your only reference here is the IP itself (not the domain) and not all networks will receive the updated DNS instantaneously. Most hosting services do indicate that a transfer of DNS services can take as much as 48 hours to globally propagate to every ISP.
<added> In using hosting service in California, Florida, and across Canada I get to see this quite a bit, since I am generally 2000 miles away from the host.</added>
What you're not seeing is that if someone who is moving a site keeps the site present at both locations, there is no dicrepancy.
An ISP/server that has received the updated DNS will show the site at the new location. An ISP/server that has not will show the new location. Do you see?
At no point does a website in transition ever not have a location --->from the perspective of a given isp/server<--- which is all that matters.
Sorry for the extra accentuation... just trying to make it clear this time. ;-)
vice <img src="yourimage.gif"> in your site, the old DNS will not resolve since this reference would now need to be <img src="http://123.123.123.123/yourimage.gif">.
...which was my original point.
Website originally located at host BOB.
Website moving to host ED.
Internet surfer connected using ISP JOSE
Web guy uploads the site to ED so that now the site is present in full at both ED and BOB. He then starts the DNS transfer.
48 hours later JOSE still hasn't quite received the updated DNS. Any request made through JOSE will go to BOB, relative or not... images, external files, scripts, html documents, whatever. The ISP will send the request to BOB
BOB will send back the requested file, BOB doesn't care about the DNS update as long as Web guys client hasn't cancelled their account or deleted the files.
2 seconds later JOSE has received the update. Now JOSE will send any requests to ED. ED doesn't care about the DNS update either as long as Web guys clients have paid and the files are present.
Regardless of the status of the DNS update JOSE and any of his COUSINS, AUNTS, UNCLES and SISTERS are going to receive the requested file. ;-)
markd you will most likely be fine.
They resolve to one IP address before the DNS change, and another one after, as a result of the nameserver query.
I'm not quite sure of the logistics of this (just making a point) but, theoretically, if a surfer had loaded half of a website when the ISP got a DNS update, the other half of the websites images/external files would load from the new host without a glitch. This includes absolutes as well as relatives.
The transfer went fine, the host DNS was updated instantly, and more than enough time has passed for the new DNS to propogate globally. Problem? - no Googlebot since the day of the transfer. Zero, not one visit - we were on daily crawling, hadn't missed a day for a long time.
The problem has to be the Google DNS cacheing, and this seems to have been covered before on this forum. Googlebot is knocking on the old IP, and there ain't nothing I can do until their DNS tables are updated. Unless someone has a suggestion, that is.
So, yes, wait until the dance has been called, and then do your move, giving yourself as much time as possible.
Mat
Google does take a while to update its DNS cache, as long as you have left the site up on the old host then you will have NO problems.
This topic has been covered extensively here at WebmasterWorld do a site search for DNS cache or similar.
One other point make sure your old host removes any zone data or googlebot may still attempt to get the pages from the old host.
Yes I am talking from experience :)
hope this helps
Dazz
My take on it is that as long as you are refering to a domain name and not an IP address then the DNS could be forever changing and there would be no problems as long as the file exists on both hosts.
Dazz
as long as you have left the site up on the old host then you will have NO problems.
...well, that's precisely the problem. I didn't change hosts - perfectly happy with them - I just changed IP moving from a shared box to a dedicated box. They (quite rightly) won't allow serving of the same domain from 2 IP's, so I have no choice but to offer up a daily (who am I kidding - hourly) prayer that Google come and get me on the new IP.
I've read the threads, that's why I'm worried. This seems to be a big failing from Google - can't think of another one, in fact - if the 'net' can update DNS from the highest to the lowest in 72 hours or so, why can't Google?
Mat
A server failure created a situation where "no site present" for days.
Pick up a new server uploaded, pointed the DNS to the new IP, within a few hours (about 14) all the traffic was back almost in normal.
Old server was down for a week and lost everything there and since traffic had propagated thought everything was great so forgot all about the old server and they didn't notify either.
Notice in the logs today (a week later) that every single spider, bot, and crawler has been visiting the old IP (and receiving 404 errors) and for some reason didn't pickup the DNS transfer nor the re-direct left in htaccess.
10 thousand visitors gone in a day, shortly.
I would rank this DNS issue as the most serious flaw in G I have seen to date. Don't change those IP's, people.
Ah well, at least we'll have a quiet December. Sob.
Mat
Haven't got access to logs at new host yet (haven't had time).
They may actually be spidering both IP's, and un-caching the old.
I guess I'll know in a couple of days. :) :( :) :( not sure which?
