Will you have ranking/SE problems if you change hosting providers?

Does it matter if it's named or IP based hosting?

[stlouislouis]

If you need, for whatever reason, to change the the hosting company you use for your website, what is the effect on your SE placement/rank?

Would it be unaffected? Or would you basically be starting all over again?

Does it matter if your hosting account is named or IP based?

Moreover, what does one need to do to insure not having problems when changing hosting companies?

Also, my understanding is web hosting company clients don't "own" the IPs they are assigned. So, short of having one's own data center, this has to be an issue for anyone changing hosting providers.

Thanks,

Louis

[Reflect]

Hi,

No it will not effect your rankings. The spider might miss one run possibly. When DNS is changed it takes around 24-48 hours to propigate around the globe, I believe. Piece of advice would be to leave your site in place for twice the lenght then remove it. That way if the zone files don't hit an area before a surfer hits your site they still will see the old site.

Brian

[ciml]

25-48 hours is about normal for browsers, but because search engines have to hit so many domains each month they cache for longer.

GoogleGuy indicated that Google had improved their DNS refresh rate, but people still report Googlebot hitting old IPs for a few weeks. Anyone know how other engines compare?

[incywincy]

when i switched hosts i left the old site in place and monitored my logs regularly.

once i saw that the activity on the old site had ceased and that the spiders i considered impotant had crawled my new site i cancelled my old hosting account.

[stlouislouis]

Thanks everybody! I was worried about this!

Take care,

Louis