Quick Google DNS Update.

[NickCoons]

I've not recently (within the past five years) had to move a site from one server to another. But I finally decided to move one of my sites from being virtually served with other sites to its own server. I stayed up all Friday night building the server and configuring the software and again Saturday.

Saturday evening, I moved the site over to the new server but kept it on the old server for Google. I've heard the horror stories of Google taking months to update their DNS cache, so I was afraid that it was going to take quite some time before it started crawling the new site. Leaving the old site up just so there was something to crawl is not a problem, but updating and maintaining both sites was not looking like fun.

After reading through here a bit, I noticed that the most recent thread indicated that someone in this position did the same thing and it took Google only eight days to start crawling the new server exclusively.

They may be getting faster, or I may have caught them at the right time of the month, but the site went live on the new server by Saturday evening. Google was crawling both the new and the old on Sunday and made its last request to the old site on Sunday evening.

So the total turn-around time for this has been about 24 hours. I'm still keeping track of the old site (Monday late night right now), and no sign of Googlebot on the old server, but it seems to be making regular traffic on the new server.

[ciml]

Nick, I agree. In the old days it often would take weeks, but since early last year when GoogleGuy told us they'd be improving, Google have become faster and faster when it comes to dealing with IP changes.

[johnser]

We must be doing something wrong ......

Had 2 domains, x.com & y.com both pointing at the same IP & site with 3,000+ pages.

Only x.com pages was showing in serps. Y.com was viewed as duplicate content so did not appear.

We removed all content from x.com and put the domain on a different IP block. All x.com pages now redirect to y.com

Home page of y.com is now being crawled daily & is getting a fresh tag but spider won't go any deeper into the site. It used to index all 3k pages via the old domain.

Google is still seeing the domains as one website even though they've been completely separate for 2 months in every sense. Any clues?

We had the same problem for a different client last spring and got it sorted out after 2 months but the above is killing me.

TIA
J

[NickCoons]

johnser,

<Only x.com pages was showing in serps. Y.com was viewed as duplicate content so did not appear.

We removed all content from x.com and put the domain on a different IP block. All x.com pages now redirect to y.com>

In your viewpoint, are they duplicate content, or were they? Seperating the sites onto different IP addresses shouldn't make a difference. As far as google is concerned, duplicate content is duplicate content, whether it's running on one server or two seperate ones.

From what I hear, pages that were tagged duplicate by Google and very hard to get back into the index.

[johnser]

Thanks for that Nick - You're right.

They were dubbed "duplicate" but all the content pages on x.com have now been emptied and just have a link pointing to y.com is on every page (in addition to the redirect)

>>>>From what I hear, pages that were tagged duplicate by Google and very hard to get back into the index<<<<<

Whoever said that knew what they were talking about :(

[claus]

>> After reading through here a bit, I noticed that the most recent thread

The most recent ones i've seen suggest that you will get spidered the moment you change your DNS (same or next day).

>> They may be getting faster, or I may have caught them at the right time of the month

I don't think they can get any faster now, the DNS change seems like the fastest possible :):)

>> total turn-around time for this has been about 24 hours

As you have probaly not changed domain name, then Yes. Otherwise it would still take a bit of time to get the new domain name reflected in the SERPS, afaik.

/claus

[AthlonInside]

I move my site on 23rd. Different IP but same DNS servers.

I didn't check my old site as I don't have the chances.

GoogleBot CRAWL my new server IMMEDIATELY start from 23rd! :)

[lasko]

Hi

I transfered my web site on a shared hosting account, I
uploaded the site to the new IP address then changed the DNS entry to point to the new server.

My site did not go down once and google cached the new version within a day.

On the new version I added a small 15x15 image so I could easily tell when the new version was been pointed to and when Google had cached the page.

As I said with 24 hours Google visited and cached no problem

Maybe I was lucky but it is best to have both versions running whilst you wait :)

[Rugles]

I would still leave your site on both servers for several days. Just as a safety measure.

[NickCoons]

claus,

<The most recent ones i've seen suggest that you will get spidered the moment you change your DNS (same or next day).>

I went through each page of this particular forums doing a textual search for "DNS", and this is the most recent one I found:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Obviously your way of searching was better, because it sounds like you found something newer :-).

Rugles,

<I would still leave your site on both servers for several days. Just as a safety measure.>

Considering I run all of the servers here in house, and it doesn't cost me anything, it actually would be *more* work to remove the site from the old server.. so I plan on leaving it there for a while just to make sure it doesn't get hit again.

[claus]

>> something newer

This is the one i was thinking about: Is google getting faster in all aspects? [webmasterworld.com]

;)