Changing hosts and Google

[promis]

Hi everybody,

I know thre were several threads about this subject but my search did leave some doubts.

I am moving to a dedicated server with a new host. I understand that it is better to leave the site hosted with the previous host for a couple of months until googlebot finds the new IP. What I am not sure is whether during the DNS transfer I should just add the new DNS addresss along with the previous ones or I should substitute them getting rid of the old ones.

In the first case, with the DNS of both hosts, wouldn't Google consider the site at the new location a double and get penalized for it?

In the second case, with only the new DNS address, wouldn't site at the previous host go offline right after the removal of the DNS?

I would appreciate any solid advice from anyone who had such an experience.

[lazerzubb]

Replace them with new DNS info.

[Mozart]

Hi promis!

The situation as I understand it is this: Googlebot caches the IP address of hosts and only refreshes them every now and then. Therefore when you change the DNS to a new IP address Googlebot may still look at the old IP for your site. On the other hand if Googlebot coincidentally re-caches your IP at this moment it will get the new IP address and from then onwards only look at the new site.

So you need to replace old IP with new IP in the DNS. But it could be wise to have the old site at the old IP still set up for a while, in case Googlebot looks there.

Your suspicion therefore is correct, the old site goes offline for anyone resolving the domain name to IP, and that is basically for any human visitor. But not necessarily for Google.

Hope that helps.

[bluemi]

Yes, this has been an issue some time ago but from my experience it isn't anymore. Within the last few months I have moved several domains to a different hosting company, and in most cases even switched to a different registrar. I have never ever experienced any problems, no drop in rankings or a site been excluded from Google for a month or so. Even the fresh tags were there without any interruption.

[hazardtomyself]

I just moved one site to another web host. I changed the DNS to the new host and the Gbot never missed a beat. This site is consistently crawled every couple days.

[jady]

Same here - never see problems when switching hosts from one to another. (we are a hosting company) Usually see Googlebot within a few days grabbing pages. For safeguard some folks even leave their old host active for a few weeks to ensure it follows the new DNS.

Also make sure you have a dedicated IP address.. :)