Best time and method to switch hosting

.. while minimizing Google indexing losses due to new IP

[born2drv]

I think it's been mentioned on here before... I did a site search and looked in the knowledge base, but couldn't find anything.

I plan on hosting all my sites on my own server now since I am starting to get more domains, plus more traffic. But the problem is, I know Google indexes by IP address, and I don't want to be out for 1 month, especially with Christmas season coming up.

So could someone give me some suggestions on how to inform Google of my new IP address ASAP and when to do the switch to minimize Google downtime?

Thanks.

[emione]

Sorry, I wanted to move this post by born2drv back up. I'm also interested in finding out if anyone has an answer to the questions raised by born2drv.

Thanks

[fathom]

A recent thread on this:

Hosting Transfer Issues [webmasterworld.com]

It is best to have access to both hosts over the propagation period, or about 48 hours.

<Added> I did forget that there is a discussion within the discussion, you shouldn't need to worry about. :) you'll know when you read it. ED, JOSE and whomever. LOL :) </added>

[edited by: fathom at 6:36 am (utc) on Oct. 28, 2002]

[Marcia]

born2drv, you might want to think twice about moving sites during holiday season. I've never experienced a problem moving between unique IP numbers, but it seems there have been some difficulties lately. Check this thread and the links there

[webmasterworld.com...]

[born2drv]

Great, thanks so much, I guess I shouldn't worry so much :)

[nancyb]

born2drv

I moved my site on 10/6 just before the time Ms Googlebot usually deep crawls my site. She came by the new IP on the 8th and deep crawled for two days. Noticed that all the other bots crawled the new IP by the middle of Oct.

But, I kept seeing googlebot (various IPs) in my old site logs, too. So, since we don't really know how google manages their DNS AND I had been heavily penalized for months and was just coming back, I changed the robots.txt at the old IP to disallow googlebot so I wouldn't get penalized for a duplicate site. (I know, probably not necessay, but after 13 months in the basement dunce corner, I wasn't taking any chances.)

The next day the fresh tags started appearing again and I noticed fresh tags on several sites that always get a fresh tag when mine do, this time though, I had no fresh tags. I watched for three days and no tags for me, but for all the other sites.

Because I wasn't getting "freshed" any longer, I removed the googlebot disallow from the old robots.txt and updated that old site with all the new pages I had added/updated on the new IP. The next day I had fresh tags again.

From my experience, I think the deep crawlers find the new IP soon after a change, but the fresh crawlers don't until probably after the index is actually updated from the last deep crawl.

Since it is so close to the shopping season, I would keep the old sites and keep them updated to match the new IP for at least a month. I'll probably keep my old site until I see fresh tags without seeing googlebot at my old IP.

[bobmark]

I tend top agree with nancyb. The monthly googlebot crawl seems to pick up a new IP, the "fresh bot" won't.
On that basis, the best time to move would be just before a monthly crawl (as nancyb's worked out and others have experienced as well). However, this calls for somewhat delicate judgement as who knows what the effect would be of a move during the crawl if you get it wrong.
In my case I moved on the 12th, just after a crawl and gradually lost my freshened pages and serp on some keywords over the month.

[ir_spamur]

I was also wondering about this. I ended up paying for the month of November at my old host just to make sure i don't lose xmas traffic. If I don't start seeing google hits on the new site before end of Nov. I'll have to pay for Dec. too. It would be nice if google had an expired DNS submission form so that we didn't have to pay double rent every time we switch hosts.

[bobmark]

This is something I wish GoogleGuy would respond to as it would seem to be a simple question to answer from a few possibles:
1) we are right and the monthly crawl follows url so picks up new IP addresses.
2) the fresh bot can't update the dns cache so it will not pick up a new IP until the monthly crawl does
3) (like nancyb I wonder about this but was afraid to try it) If you deleted the site on the old IP address would it force the freshbot to follow url and find the new or would the effect be disaster?
This is such a common concern on here I wish Google would not - as with everything else - leave us to rely on guesswork and folklore and just give an answer.

[Night_Hawk]

I am going through the same thing right now, one day I decide, ok I am changing my hosting company and I am moving my site, the next day I read some post that tells me not to do it and wait, I am really confused now. I did sign up with a different hosting company but I have not transfer my DNS yet.

But from what read so far on this issue, I think it will be ok as long as you have all the files on both hosts. is that save to assume.

[born2drv]

From what I have read and understand now, you don't want to remove the content from the old IP because google will assume your site is non-existant and drop it the following month, until it sees you back again on another IP.

So I think it's safe to switch if you keep the old one active, or at least I hope so. :)

[annej]

I just changed hosts a little over a week ago. Now my site looks like this in Google.

Index of /
Index of /. Name Last modified Size Description Parent Directory
24-Oct-2002 09:24 - stats/ 21-Oct-2002 20:15 -
Category: Top/Society/People/Women
[(my...] site - parenthesis mine).com/ - Cached

Not much there to interest anyone in going to my Womenfolk site. (sigh) My home page still has the same page ranking and good placement under major keywords so hopefully this will soon sort it's self out. Have others experienced this?

All the other pages seem find including all subdirectories.

Anne

[bobmark]

My home page reverted to a roughly 2 month old version as all freshening stopped. Like you, anne, I hope the update will sort it out.
As to people's comment about leaving the site in both old and new locations, that seems to be the logical guess although I am not sure if it is correct. The Google "freshbot" will continue to spider the old location only so any changes to your "new" site will not be picked up unless you make the two locations mirrors. I wonder what the effect of simply transferring the site and leaving no copy at the old IP address would be..would it force Googlebot to follow your url and update the dns expediting the process or would it cause problems. It would take guts to find out, huh?

[annej]

I completly quit my old hosting company because I didn't want to pay for 3 more months. I didn't think about doing both but I do wonder if being on both might just delay the transfer with Google.

I notice that nothing has changed in my listing yet but then all my google, google2 and google3 listings are still the same so I don't think anything is happening yet. I'm sure it will eventually sort itself out, just wonder how long.

Anne

[bobmark]

Hey GoogleGuy! (with deepest respect and affection)
is there an easy answer to this along the lines of deep crawl bot follows url each month, freshbot uses cache?
This really is a question that is always being posted on here and it would seem to be a fairly strightforward issue (and we promise not to hold you responsible for all the other factors that can cause a site to be missed).

[annej]

I see that on www2 and www3 my site is no longer

Index of /

but now has a full description. The only problem is that it is the old information and still the old cached page.

I just hope this means Google has found my site under its new host.

I'll feel better when the description and cache match. Does that happen after the dance or much later?

Anne

[bobmark]

I think what you are seeing is the page that was crawled on your last deep crawl (which would have been at your old site). In my case www2,3 show that now, while www still shows a page from September or so.
My guess is nothing will change until you (and I) get deep crawled in the next week or two when presumably everything will be rectified.
I really wish GoogleGuy would respond to this as it seems such a simple question to answer. I had a post on another thread he had posted on asking him, but it was deleted (the moderator said something about "we can't have people interrupting threads to try and attract GoogleGuy's attention", which made me feel rather like a teenager at their first class party).
I too am a bit uneasy about the end of November update.

[Tropical Island]

I moved two sites on Oct. 7.

The smaller site is in www2 & www3 with a cache of Oct. 11.

The larger, and more important site, has disappeared except for a couple of internal pages that still have a Sept.4 cache. When I put in the url it's not there. So it looks like I really blew it by moving the site so close to the regular deep crawl. We were getting fresh tags every few days and now nothing.

Does anyone think there is a chance it will make the final changes to www?

[bobmark]

I certainly don't have the kind of detailed knowledge Brett would have but: do you know if the fresh tags were from the new or old location?
In my case, the fresh tags lasted but were from the old site; the daily crawl spider has not yet picked up the new IP address. I am in www2 & www3 (fingers crossed) but that is the result of the deep crawl of the old location just before the move.
I wish I had something optimistic to say about the lack of results in www2 and www3 for you. I think it's possible for old cached pages currently in www to survive the update as people have had the problem where they moved their site and old, un-updated pages lasted in the index for months.
hope this helps

[born2drv]

Tropical Island, when you made the switch, did you keep the other hosting active?

[Tropical Island]

When the move was made the hosting company deleted all the files on the old server and there was a front page notice that the site was down = come back later. This page still exists if you type in the old DNS url. If you enter any extensions on the old DNS you get a 404 page.
It appears that www is now showing the update and the only listing I could find for our main page was under an obscure search term with a cache of Sept. 4. This site has been around since 1995 and is one of the most informative on our area. It has always had excellent posistioning not only in Google but in the other major SEs. In Google as of a few minutes ago it's vitually non existent.
My stomach will never be the same.

[annej]

happiness is (drumroll) seeing my site updated with the new description and cache on www2 and www3. Update oct 31. There is hope!

Anne

[Tropical Island]

Here I am again.

I just checked my site and the PR bar is now greyed over and reading "this site is not ranked by Google".

Does any one feel that an e-mail to Google would help?
Or do we just have to sit and wait while Googlebot finds the new DNS address. I feel so helpless.

GG if you read this is there any hope of getting this resolved before next month?

This whole problem is because Interland couldn't resolve a tech problem on the MS servers (we couldn't upload changes) and virtually forced us to a Linux server (which I love by the way - really fast uploads). The hours of long distance from Venezuela and the hours of work debugging the sites because of the change just gets me madder and madder especailly now that we missed out being in Google this month. AHHHHHH.