Host is changing all IP addresses, how will this affect my sites?

Will my web sites be out of Google's index for a while?

[Trisha]

I know that issues concerning changing IP addresses have been discussed here before. If I remember right, it's usually advised to keep the site on the old server for a while, to give Google time to find the new one. I don't fully understand why though, or how it works.

Either way, my host is upgrading to new servers and all IP addresses will be changing. Including sites with dedicated IP's. I was told that they will only be able to keep the sites on the old servers for a couple of days. Will that be enough? Or will I have problems?

I suppose this would be a good time to change the sites that were using a shared IP over to a dedicated one. They would still be on the same block though so maybe it wouldn't make much difference anyway.

Any thoughts? Advice?

[nancyb]

depends on the hosting service. some are better than others at managing the DNS changes.

If you are talking about a hosting service that is well known around here - and - is going through major problems with their upgrade, I will say they evidently did this right. Checking my logs, all the main spiders have already found my site on the new IP and continued their crawls. And, yes, I checked for googlebot first ;)

[Tropical Island]

With regard to Google it was posted here recently that they have improved their ability to update the DNS changes to a few days from a couple of weeks like it used to be. According to nancyb that seems to be the case.

Ask (demand?) that your hosting company keep your old sites up as long as possible. If necessary get to someone in management to impress upon them the seriousness of this change to your posistion in the major search engines. When we went from MS to Linux over a year ago our hosting company put up a "no longer here" page and that was what showed up in the serps for more than a month.

[Trisha]

Actually, I use a different host than the one 'well known around here'. I did see the posts today about people having problems with that company upgrading. It is interesting that my host would be upgrading at the same time though.

So what is the proper way to manage the DNS changes? Is there something I can ask my host about how they are doing it?

I'm seriously thinking about logging into the control panel and changing all my sites to dedicated IP's now. Is that a bad idea for any reason?

[drewls]

A couple of days should do it. I run a hosting company, and when we do server moves, we usually allow it to take a month or two just to be sure. (no matter where you are, there's always ONE GUY who never responds to emails so you can give them the new info)

If your hosts have root on both machines (they might not if they are going from being resellers to owning a dedicated machine) it should be very simple for them to make this move without any downtime at all. The changes with the IPs should start working instantly, thus eliminating the problem of Google finding it down.

If your host doesn't know a TTL from an SOA, then, you might be looking at a bit of propagation time.

[Trisha]

Just saw your reply, Tropical Island.

With regard to Google it was posted here recently that they have improved their ability to update the DNS changes to a few days from a couple of weeks like it used to be.

I thought I had read something like that, just didn't pay a lot of attention because it didn't concern me at the time. And I had no idea this would be happening with my host. That's good to hear though!

Ask (demand?) that your hosting company keep your old sites up as long as possible.

I don't think they are going to change their minds and extend it for more than 2 days.

Likely the sites have already been moved to the new servers, they were working on it yesterday.

[Trisha]

I don't know 'TTL from an SOA', so I guess it's good I'm not a host! I don't know if they have 'root on both machines', but they said there shouldn't be any downtime for the web sites.

In general it sounds good then, 2 days should be enough.

I'm thinking twice about changing the IP's to dedicated ones now though. I wish I had made all of them dedicated to start with, but I didn't. I can change it through the control panel software (hsphere). I thought it might be a good time to do it since they would be changing now anyway. But maybe not, I don't understand it all well enough to know how different ways of changing it might affect how Google handles it. They would still all be on the same block anyway.