Google "Freshbot" crawling exclusively by IP

heretofore unseen phenomenon

[verbum]

Ten days ago I moved my domain from one dedicated IP to another (entirely different blocks), leaving an html redirect on the first IP. All bots except Google's have since crawled the new IP (i.e., the domain name); Google's freshbot, however, continues to visit the old, now domain-nameless, IP. Google most definitely has not hit the domain name itself (the new IP).

What gives?

Thanks!

[Receptional Andy]

Google uses a cache of Ip addresses. Try doing a site search (link at the top of the page) for 'google ip cache' and you will find many related posts. It's usually a good idea to start at the site search, as most topics have been discussed already.

(Welcome to webmasterworld, by the way :))

[verbum]

Thanks, Andy.

In sum, only Google knows. ;)

[Receptional Andy]

There are lots of posts discussing this. Here's another one that might be handy:

[webmasterworld.com...]

The best way to overcome the problem is to have your site up on both IP addresses for as long as possible, and eventually Googlebot will realise the IP has changed. Granted, this can be a bit tricky in some cases.

[verbum]

Hi again, Andy

Yes, that appears to be the best way. I was concerned about the perils of "duplicate content," but maintaining identical (or nearly so) content on the old IP, at least until Google recognizes the change, appears to be the way to go.

Thanks very much!

[Receptional Andy]

>>I was concerned about the perils of "duplicate content,"

Both sites should be the same URL/domain with the only difference between them being the IP. In this way, it would be impossible for Google to see it as duplicate content. In any case it won't visit both IPs at the same time - it will only visit the old one until the cache gets updated, and then after that it will only visit the new one.

[bobmark]

To summarize the knowledge of other threads (as I had this problem too) it appears the "deep crawl bot" queries dns and updates the cache so until the monthly crawl, freshbot will continue to visit your old IP Address. If you delete that content, it will not visit until the deep crawl bot refreshes the cache (barring a massive cache update by Google in the interim).