Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
A client of mine has a local business that focuses on a region of California, and has had a web site for quite some time. For a variety of reasons, including the fact that the hosting service was incredibly bad, I suggested he move from this UK-based host to a California-based host. I really haven't done any SEO on his site beyond using proper HTML during the redesign process so I'd have a useful baseline to guage the results of my impending efforts, but I was hoping for at least a glimmer of an uptick in his rankings once the host change was absorbed by Google. That was over a month ago and nothing's happened yet. Anybody got any experience on how long it takes for any such benefits to become apparent?
In this case, if the domain was an U.K TLD, moving it to an U.S host{ providing they are using an U.S IP range} may improve results in the U.S Google index slightly but thats it.
I.P locality is far from the 'be all and end all' of SEO, it's simply a best practice that can yield powerful results if used with a combination of other tactics.
We've converted two PR6 sites in the last six months from linux to windows (actually went with a url structure that doesn't reveal tech used).
No problems whatsoever. We're getting ready to convert another PR6 in less than a month and will be doing the same.
Addited: I'm now a junior member -- whoo hoo!
[edited by: lovethecoast at 1:20 am (utc) on Mar. 23, 2005]
Even changing urls, you won't have any problems as long as you use 301's properly.
Even with 301s, most people in a competetive sector will experience a drop in the SERPS for a period of about a month.
Odd co-incidence since we were dropped within 48 hours of the 301. I wasn't aware that there was an update on Jan. 21st (date we were axed).
I repeat...
Even with 301s, most people in a competetive sector will experience a drop in the SERPS for a period of about a month.
2 months ago, you used 301 redirects, yes? For arguments sake we'll say you did it on 5th of February.
Now the 301's can cause a drop in rankings for approximately a month. That means under normal circumstances your site would have returned to its usual ranking on the 5th March.
However there was an update in the middle of February. I'm suggesting that this update could have affected your site's rankings.
So, even if your site hadn't used 301's your site would have dropped in the middle of February anyway.
Google will have picked up your 301's accordingly by 5th March. However your ranking is still lower than it was before because of the update.
comprendé?
Please let's keep it friendly-- I'm just trying to help and learn. If 301's are risky in the current Google climate, others who depend on their online business for income might want to know. . . there is a chance this isn't related to changing algo's, esp. given Google help's response. A friend of mine who runs a what was a PR7 site did a 301 last June and was dropped for 7 months (their 301 and resulting disappearence from SERPs was clearly long before Alegra and more recent updates). Silly me, I thought he just had bad luck and it wouldn't happen to me.
On another topic, what do you think the chances of being restored to the SERPs by reverting back to the old domain name would be? It currently still fully indexed but moved to the supplemental index.
[edited by: lisag at 4:49 am (utc) on April 5, 2005]
it was Jan 21, if you read the thread, not Feb. 5
Do you know what "For argument's sake" means?
Do you want to know the funny thing? When I was writing that, I had a feeling you were going to point out that wasn't the correct date.
I was half tempted to be patronising and explain it, but then I thought I'd give you the benefit of the doubt, after all, nobody can be that stupid.
