Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
In any event, I've posted numerous times this month on the hot topic of lost rankings in the SERPs.
I just wanted to add something to this -- I recently migrated my site about 2 1/2 months ago, to a new broadband ISP (from a dial-up ISP that I was using). I did this in mid-October, and everything appeared to transition over nicely. I started dipping in the SERPs a bit in the beginning of December, and when December 20th hit, boom! I was basically eradicated from all rankings in the SERPs. I am still indexed for most pages, and have NOT been banned from Google.
In any event, has anyone heard of instances where moving to a new ISP could result in dropping of the face of the earth? If so, why, and is it recoverable?
Thanks in advance.
Words like "dial-up" and "broadband" refer to the way you personally access the web, and not how your website is hosted. You can choose to have your website hosted by the same company that provides you with your Internet access (either as a freebie or as part of package) but that is in no way required.
So your question boils down to whether a change of host can affect the SERPs, and my answer is that I've only heard of this under VERY rare cirumcustances -- especially since your website is clearly resolving at the new host.
1. The new hosting company can do something wrong technically that denies access to googlebot - I know of one such case. If I discovered this was happening, I would not wait one hour, I would change hosts immediately (and not accept any apology or enticement to stay.) It is a stupid and inexcusable error.
You could check this through your server logs, or through Webmaster Tools -- Google will report to you in your GWT account if the spider is having trouble.
2. The other case is if by some coincidence you are now sharing an IP address with a whole bunch of bad news websites, and even further, somehow other, you are reciprocating links with one of them.
By the way, in case anyone reading this thread would appreciate a step by step recommendation for trouble-free migration to a new web host, Matt Cutts blogged about it:
[mattcutts.com...]
This link is also available in the "hot topics" thread at the top of the Google Forum's index page.
Just trying to eliminate all potential changed variables at this point.
Dead in the water since December 20th, and I need to explore every item that has changed on/or about this date.
what country is your site aimed at?
what country is your new isp in
What country is the IP of your website server
I recently switched a site from a large well known hosting company that has issues (such as an occasional 30 second delay before serving a page. etc. etc. etc.) to a small hosting company that doesn't have as many clients or doesn't overload their servers.
The result is the google crawl rate as depicted in Google Sitemaps increased dramatically.
I can't say that helped my positioning but it can't hurt and I have increased significantly in my Google results. Although I have also changed many other things as well.
I would recommend you try <a domain monitoring service> to keep an eye on your server performance. Also if you are using Google Sitemaps make sure they're not listing any problems for your site.
<Removed specific link
See Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com]>
[edited by: tedster at 2:23 am (utc) on Dec. 28, 2006]
