Moving Popular Sites to a New Server

What is the correct approach.

[Barleycorn]

I have some sites that are tasking my server, which is good whoopee, but they need to be moved.

What is the correct procedure? Move them, which gives it a new ip, scary, keep them on old server for week-month?

Thanks for all your help everyone!

[Mohamed_E]

Barleycorn,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, and congratulations on outgrowing your first server.

Moving to a new IP (I assume you will keep the domain name) used to be a big hassle, because Googlebot used to be very slow in picking up the new IP.

Several recent threads in the Google News Forum suggest that Googlebot is now doing things right, and picking up the new IP within a day or so.

The concensus seems to be: keep the old site up if you can until you see Googlebot crawling your new site.

End users will have no difficulty finding the new site.

[Barleycorn]

thanks mohammed. how long should i keep my site up on old server. It used to be 2-3 months. what is it now?

[Mohamed_E]

Until you see Googlebot crawling the new site (check your logs), probably two or three days.

This is one area where Googlebot has improved immensely. As you say, it used to take her two or three months to find the new site after an IP change, now she finds it almost immediately.