IP Address change

would changing an IP address for a URL hurt rankings

[jschmeez32]

We changed a large number of sites IP addresses but the URL's stayed the same. OUr rankings in Google have significaly dropped. Could this have affected our rankings or from our understanding Google looks for the URL and IP addresses are transparent? Any Ideas?

[outrun]

AFAIK Google has its own dns server, so maybe changing your ip did result in a drop in your google ranking. It takes awhile for google update the ip address but it will eventually.

regards,
Mark

[kpaul]

any estimate on how long the process takes? ballpark?

i'm gonna have to be doing the same sometime in the near future as traffic increases.

thanks.

[verbum]

In my experience, it takes Google 4-6 weeks to "recognize" the new IP. Until this happens, having your site's content on the old IP in addition to its presence on the new IP is a good thing.

There's been much discussion on this issue here; among the better threads:

[webmasterworld.com ]

[swizz]

Hello Guys,

I don't know what are the experiences from others here about changing ip... but when I changed it, it took google 4-5 days until the bot found my site. It was really fast.

1. I changed the site to the new server.
2. on the old server I made a permanent redirection to the new ip.
3. I left the old server for 4 days online then took it off.

on the fifth day googlebot, scooter, slurp, they were all on, crawling my site...

About my Ranking I didn't saw any major drop, just the normal dominic pr drop (a lot of people did).

Hope it helps
SwiZZ