spider absolute or relative IP addresses

which one?

[mansfield smooth]

I am wondering if google stores relative IP addresses for websites when it spiders them.

I have a site that has been in google for about 3 years under the same IP address & domain name.

Last month I changed host.

Yesterday (22nd) the SERPS showed that google had spidered a new home page for my site, the holding page of my former hosts.

As far as I can see, Google must store a relative IP address for websites when it spiders them.

Hence when it goes to re-spider my site it goes to the "old" web server, not the new one since IP addresses are absolute. I notice if I click on the main link (not the "cached") it shows the correct website.

I am worried that this is a long term problem, does anyone know of anything similar or of a solution?

[bcc1234]

There is no such thing as relative and absolute IP.
What happens is google caches the IP addresses of domains it spiders.
You might want to change the DNS servers that are authoritative of your domain to provoke google to do another DNS query.
If you just leave it as it is - it might take up to several months before google starts hitting your new server, but eventually it will.

[mansfield smooth]

bcc1234

I believed that there is no other way of effecting the service without relocating the domain to a completely separate name server and "hoping" that Google clears it's cache?

I dont know how I can use DNS to provoke a change?

[bcc1234]

"...to change the DNS servers that are authoritative of your domain..."

means exactly the same as

"...relocating the domain to a completely separate name server..."

What was the question?

[ciml]

I don't know of a way to provoke a DNS lookup.

GoogleGuy indicated earlier this year that the DNS would be retried more often, but the length of Google's DNS caches (on the Googlebot machines and their central cache) are the world's most inexplicable secret.

(In other words, I think they should tell us, but they won't:))

[mansfield smooth]

bcc1234

the question is:

how do I get google to spider the correct content as soon as possible?

i do not understand how changing the DNS again will provoke a change anyway, after all it is the IP address that google has wrong.

sorry to sound so ignorant, i am new to this game :)

[warmasol]

I changed the provider for a domain last week. The entries in most DNS-Servers changed now.
I saw, that (nearly) all the visitors of this domain used the new site hosted by the new provider.
Google still crawled the old site(old provider). I thoght that is a problem with some DNS-servers, not updated. Now i think the problem is bigger than i thought before. If i understand the problem with the Google IP cache, i have to update the old Site too and use the old Provider, since Google will cache the new IP. Without this update Google will index other content than the visitors refered from Google will see.
If that the the right way, i think it is easier to change the domain.

[ciml]

warmasol, if you can keep the site going for a while on both IPs after the DNS changes from thr old to the new, then you should have no problem.

Unfortunately we don't know how long you need to do that...

[Ready To Roll]

Interesting...
I recently changed hosts, and, thanks to this forum, thought it wise to leave the pages on both servers. The problem is, I don't know if I did it correctly. Can someone please tell me if this is the right way:

NS1.newhost.com
NS1.oldhost.com
NS2.newhost.com
NS2.oldhost.com

[ciml]

I would just set the domain to use the new DNS servers. The old Web server probably needs to think that it still handles DNS in order to host the domain.

[bcc1234]

i do not understand how changing the DNS again will provoke a change anyway, after all it is the IP address that google has wrong.

A few months ago, I moved about 15 sites to a different box.
While doing so, I also changed the name servers for those domains.
Google was crawling all of those sites on the new box the next month.

[mansfield smooth]

i too changed the name servers. but google is still showing content from the old host.

moreover my stats show googlebot crawl on 5th sept on my new host.

yet it has subsequently indexed content from the old host. puzzling?

[bcc1234]

too changed the name servers. but google is still showing content from the old host.

moreover my stats show googlebot crawl on 5th sept on my new host.

yet it has subsequently indexed content from the old host. puzzling?

If it's hitting the new box, then it will index the content from the new box.

[Boaz]

"if you can keep the site going for a while on both IPs after the dns changes from thr old to the new" - and what if I can't? I have a client who for various reasons absolutely must change DNS and IP, and who has no control whatsoever over what will happen or not in the "old" DNS - what's the worst case scenario? (I don't mean hypothetical, as the sky is the limit - I mean what's the worst that has actually happened to someone who changed DNS...).

[warmasol]

Google updated the IP-Cache for my site. The DeepCrawler use the IP of my domain. I think Google had updated his IP-Cache before the DeepCrawler starts.