Google DNS updates slow?

fresh bot still visiting old IP address

[johncorn]

Hi,

We moved our site to a new IP address three days ago. Previous to the move we were being visited by fresh bot about every two days. Since the move we have not been visited. Out of curiousity, I checked the logs on the old server and saw that fresh bot has been requesting pages as recently as ten hours ago.

All other bots and users found their way to the new server withing 24 hours of the DNS change while Google is still referencing the old IP three and a half days after the modifications. Are Google's DNS servers particularly slow to update?

We opted to display a static message to all vistors on the old site since it was difficult to take orders on two sites simultaneously. This page seems to have been picked up for a couple of our listings in Google. Since everyone, except Google seems to be pointing to the new site, I could probably bring the old one back up without any problems. Should I do this? How long will it be before Google starts hitting the new site?

Thanks,

John

[NFFC]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld johncorn

>Are Google's DNS servers particularly slow to update?

Yes.

>Should I do this?

Yes.

>How long will it be

Up to three months by all accounts.

[BigDave]

Leave your old site up till google stops visiting it for a month. Turn off your ordering software if you can, but leave the content up.

[Night_Hawk]

johncorn;

I agree with NFFC and Bigdave said, i would like to expand a littel since i just went through what you are going through.

I think Google update for thier DNS does happen after a deep crawl, I moved my site on the 9th of Jan. and 2 days later googlebot was in my new site and crawling some of my pages especialy the one has links to them in the index page,
so to help the fresh bot i started to put links to my important pages on my my index page but do not go over the 100 links limit set by Google (just a few at a time).

And Yes, Leave your other files on the old site there until there is no hits from any spider to your old site, keep checking your log files there.

Why can't you take order from the old site? it was fully functional a few days ago, I got one order one day after i moved the site from the old site. Your Site should be up and fully functional at both locations.

AJ

[hurlimann]

We have seen both fast and slow: Between 2 days and still waiting after 3 months.

Just leave both up: Google will cotton on eventually.

[johncorn]

AJ,

Thanks for the advice. I think we can do something similar with our index page to help the fresh bot find pages on the new server.

Our site site is a marketplace for both buyers and sellers, hence the product and prices are constantly changing throughout the day. Without employing real time database replication, it would be difficult to take orders on both sites.

Based on the previous posts, I was thinking I would setup a script to replicate the new site's content to the old one a couple of times a day.

Assuming I have this in place within the next couple of days, is there any reason we would miss the deep crawl?

John

[hurlimann]

Still waiting after a month for a new one. Pity it is slow this time. It should get 1 of page one as it is totally legit and has 1000's of backlinks. The problem lay in the hosters IP.

[Night_Hawk]

Let me clearfy about the links on the index page, when i moved my site i changed the format of the url and blocked googlebot from crawling the old format (I do not want duplicate pages), That is why i was serving the links on my index page because google fresh bot was indexing that page and whatever links on it .

If google did not update their DNS then your old site will be deep crawled. and i think that is why you are not getting deep crawled at the new site.

AJ

[eeek2]

Can you have the old site do a redirect to the new one? Google seems to follow those just fine.

[nancyb]

I agree with eeek2. It is much better to use a permanent redirect from the old site to the new site. SEs seem to find the new faster this way and you won't get hit with a potential penalty if one of them thinks you have two mirror sites.

That said, when I moved my site last October Googlebot deep crawler found it right away and crawled only the new site from then on but the freshbot continued to crawl the old site AND the new site during the next month. Then freshbot went only to the new site.

[johncorn]

I could use mod_rewrite to send all traffic to the new site. However, since both sites share the same domain name, I would have to redirect to the new IP address. Would Google not index pages containing the IP instead of the domain name?