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What are my options - is there a way to move the site without losing my Search Engine positions. I have had an experience moving a smaller site and it never did recover. Is there a way to safely do this and minimize the negative reprucussions.
Is it possible to have 2 hosting platforms for a few months? Doesn't the registrars DNS point just to one or the other?
I still feel that way for my sites, if I want to change host I do it, and generally leave a few weeks overlap from pure superstition (or sense of tidiness), never seen any difference in the engines
But what was your experience with the other site that didn't recover? now you have me spooked ;)
If possible, you'd want to run the site on the old IP until Googlebot starts visiting the site at the new IP.
You can have the old site at the old IP while your site reflects/uses the new nameservers. Simply don't cancel service with the old host until Googlebot find the new site.
Keep both alive, but NO duplicate content at both. Use a 301 to forward the whole old space to the new and you should be OK. It's far easier and better with dedicated IPs.
BTW, Inktomi just totally messed up on a site of mine moving from one name-based hosting to another. No problems at ALL with Google on it, but others have had a hard time a while back.
The answer is to move your site over to your new host, keep a duplicate at the old one, wait the 3 days that any modern intelligence requires, and know that the global dns is pointing to the new host. Correct so far.
But for Google you need to keep the old site up for as long as it takes - don't worry, as long as your old site is at the old IP, Google will go there and keep on listing you in the SERPs at the same domain
Your problem is greatest to the extent that your site changes, of course, which is why marcs said "if possible" - but I sense you have some pages you'd be happy never to change, therefore dupes on two IPs are okay, it's just a dupe hosting cost.
fwiw: I never had to wait more than a couple of months to see the new site come up in Google - but I never had to live in times of margins as tight as today's either - but make a few changes in the new IP site and see when Google catches on to the change, when you're sure they have all your pages, not just a partial, then you can drop the old one.
almost seems pathetic doesn't it, dealing with this super artificial intelligence - I need to look back through older posts on this subject, I'm curious if 301 redirect can help out here, surely there's an affirmative action. I'll be back.
If so, I take it back about dupe content.
I never thought about the IP changing - I've had really good hosts with dedicated IP who occasionally wanted to change the IP (reasons escape me), I will remember forever now not to let them do that without a 301 (now I have to go check that point)
and please somebody would the IP have changed already with the new server change?
You use .htaccess for redirection, either using mod_rewrite or a 301 permanent redirect, which is mod_alias.
Do a site search here (top of page), you'll find plenty of discussion with very specific instructions on how to do it.
I assume you're using *nix hosting.
the thing to remember is that all those sites linking to you are linking to your domain name, and that hasn't changed
I was still looking in to 301, I'm not sure what the board's consensus is about the best way to handle this, but your host just made it moot - so go get the new host, Google will find you again soon
<useless_philosophy>when dealing with Google, use a business model that allows 2-4 months fudge factor, all will be well</useless_philosophy>
But... since they've already switched IPs on you it might make sense to just jump ship now. The worst has already happened. On a positive note, though I may be wrong, if G can't resolve your site to the old IP anymore it may cause them to update their DNS cache sooner.
jamesa, definitely a feel here that duplicate content is NOT an issue during the period it takes Google to refresh its IP cache - and it makes sense to me
has anybody seen posting to contradict this?
and Marcia, jamesa is saying that 301 doesn't redirect IP to IP - jdMorgan could set us straight in a heartbeat, and you as a *fantastic mod* could set it in stone for the record...
gotta sleep, but thought I oughta figure this one out before the next hosting move(!)
I am trying to understand how DNS and IP work -
1. DNS supplies the address to searches that look for you using your .com
2. Googlebot looks for you by IP, so they don't pass through DNS
3. As long as you are still being served by the old service, too, then Google will still find you under the address in their cache until they find your new IP and update.
4. As soon as they serve up the info under the new address, disconnect the old address safely
Is this correct?
1. DNS supplies the address to searches that look for you using your .com
Change a host for your domain, you change the nameservers to reflect the new IP, eventually every computer in the global network through its routine updating procedures has caught up to your change of "newIP=domain".
I have heard some lesser elelments in the global system can take a couple of weeks to update their copy of the database, but generally for us as webmasters, the whole world resolves our domain to our new IP within three days.
2. Googlebot looks for you by IP, so they don't pass through DNS
3. As long as you are still being served by the old service, too, then Google will still find you under the address in their cache until they find your new IP and update.
4. As soon as they serve up the info under the new address, disconnect the old address safely
Pure reason tells me that you could keep the old IP up for years without hitting a dupe content issue, because your domain doesn't resolve to the old IP, therefore it's completely invisible on the Web, just doesn't exist, except in those sluggish entities like Google that let their own personal cache of IPs get stale.
It seems if you wanted to you could make changes in the new IP site just for the reassurance of seeing those changes reflected in the SERPS - and when you have pages changing anyway, in this situation, it seems you'd be doing a lot of looking just to figure when the engine's index has changed (not just when the bot crawled - as we know, it can take months to turn over all the pages in the index)
I'm pretty sure of all this, but it's so important to get right for all of us, if anything here is incorrect I hope someone will please correct it. Thanks.
ie: page on old server "abc.com/widgets/blue.html" - add a link to "abc.com/widgets/yellow.html"
new server: page "abc.com/widgets/blue.html" and page "abc.com/widgets/yellow.html"
hrm... i wouldn't bet on the IP - at least not being the only thing. There's such a thing as "virtual hosting" - it's very popular as well. VH implies that perhaps, say, 50 domains, 100, or even more share the same IP address.
The sites can be really different totally legit good valuable content sites, they just share one IP-address (with different domains/URLs) in stead of having one each.
Say that IP is 127.0.0.0 .. well if you ask to get the content of that IP the server will really not know which pages to deliver as these pages are on virtual domains, that is: In some subfolders on some machine(s) and access is controlled by a script.
If you ask for "www.example.com", then the DNS will point you to 127.0.0.0 but exactly the same will happen if you ask for "www.foo.com". Then, on the 127.0.0.0 server/load-balancer/whatever the request will get interpreted by a script displaying the right page to you.
It's similar to a .htaccess redirect, it's just taking place on a higher level than your domain.
/claus
Would it help to add a link to new pages on the new server to the old server pages
This would scare me to death - I don't have the reasoning to back it up, but I don't believe I'd be putting links between these two entities, personally.
And the way you illustrated it you have domain name linking to domain name, to serve any purpose you'd have to make links to IP addresses - I believe in the end you have to cut your losses, count your blessings, and wait for Google to take its own sweet time to refresh its IP cache
although I think you can write to Google and maybe try to expedite this
hrm... i wouldn't bet on the IP - at least not being the only thing.
claus, that's right, there's a puzzle there - but is there no consensus yet on this board about how this works?
I've scanned some of these discussions about Google's IP cache, and I haven't made the time to search thoroughly yet, I had assumed we'd have this mapped out by now, but you're one of the people I'd expect to know the answer
It looks like an exploration still in progress?
Anyway, there's been reporting of such long intervals in the past, so it's not a rumor, they really have been that slow, the question is if they are still so slow?
This thread suggests the 1-2 month interval, but then it's dated February, and there has been so many changes since: [webmasterworld.com...]
Here's the latest thread i found, from around May, it does not give much evidence either: [webmasterworld.com...]
It seems reasonable that they should be faster on the trigger when meeting 404s than when seeing new content as they don't want to show dead links and new sites require link/algo calculations and such, so that would be an explanation for the dropout thing.
That was May and before though... There's been a lot of changes lately in spidering, with freshbot becoming deepfreshbot and deepbot becoming...well, whatever... i don't think anybody really has gotten the full picture yet. The 30-60 days might not be necessary now as freshbot seems to pick up a lot of changes almost instantly.
Then again, this is changes on pages within sites, not changes of sites themselves, so i don't dare to jump to conclusions. On the other hand i'm going to change hosts myself sometime soon, so i'd really like to see any evidence in whatever direction.
/claus
