Sandboxed after move to new server?

[spietreser]

Is it normal to be sandboxed after a move to new server?

I moved to a new server and then all my rankings are GONE! So this makes me wonder if it's:
1. a change in the algorithm that filtered my site, or
2. Google now sees this as a whole new website and thus places it in the dreaded sandbox?

Any thoughts?

[Quadrille]

Is that ALL you did?

And how long ago?

You'll need to give Google time to spider the new setup. Try updating your Google sitemap.

[tedster]

Did you keep the same domain name? And even if you did, by any chance is there a nasty new robots.txt file on the new server?

[spietreser]

@ Quadrille:
Yes, what I did is:
1. copy all files to the new server
2. change nameservers for the (same) domain, so the domain now points to the new server.

@ tedster:
I don't have a robots.txt file, and I didn't have one before the move.

I moved the site about 2-3 weeks ago. When I saw that my rankings were gone, I resubmitted the site to Google this week, just in case...

How do I know if I got filtered out, or if I just need to have some patience before I come back into the SERPs?

[Quadrille]

Odd.

Try xenu, and see if there's some problem with the site.

But do try the sitemap; you'll get good information back.

How do your visitor stats look?

[Imaster]

Same thing happened to one of my website.

I moved it to a different web server, so it now has a different ip address in its record, but the name servers are the same as earlier.

I have not made a single change to the website. Simply copied the complete site over to the new server.

[incrediBILL]

Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago when I moved to a new server and then it crashed the very next night and was down about 6 hours. I dropped way down in Google for 3 months and then bounced right back.

[malinkacc]

I resubmitted the site to Google this week, just in case...

Can I ask - why would you do that? Personally I don't think that was a good idea.

[shakes303]

I have made multiple moves accross A class ips on different servers and have never had a problem...

[jdMorgan]

Some facts that may add up to trouble:

Google caches DNS lookups. That is, they have cached the old IP address for the site's domain, and will use that for awhile.

Some hosts will re-populate servers on evacuated IP addresses with a default boilerplate "Coming soon" page. (This is a simplification of what they really do, but it's accurate enough for this discussion.)

So, if you didn't leave your old site up on the old server until Google started spidering the new one, then they may be indexing that "Coming soon" page until their DNS cache expires. Although this should happen fairly soon, it's better to avoid this situation.

Always leave your belongings in your old house until you're completely finished cleaning and re-painting the new one... Even if it means paying an extra month's fees.

Jim

[tedster]

A while back, Matt Cutts blogged about the best practices for moving a site in a nice step by step format. A good reference: [mattcutts.com...]