Changing Servers

How does this affect google?

[LIUtilities]

Hi,

I am about to switch server. Can this affect my google ranking or does google only go on the domain name?

[hurlimann]

if you arn't changing domain names leave the old site up until Googlebot crawls the new site.

[lazerzubb]

If you change DNS be sure to have the old site for at least 1 month.

If you are only changing server but the DNS is still the same i would wait until they've finished the deep crawl for the upcomming index.

[Portalitalyzation]

Just Lil Tips, move it on work days, not in holiday

[percentages]

>If you change DNS be sure to have the old site for at least 1 month.

Make that 2 full dances or 2 and a bit months, which ever is the greater, and you will have nothing to worry about.

[BigDave]

I would go so far as to leave it up until googlebot is now longer crawling the old site. Check out this thread to see how long you can end up out of the index if you do not leave your old site up.

[webmasterworld.com...]

And though markh never posted again with the results, that was his problem, and his site is now back in the index. His new site was not crawled for about 3 1/2 months after the move.

[LIUtilities]

Will I be gone for from the google index for a while?

[LIUtilities]

Is the best time to change server during the google dance?

[ciml]

LIUtilities, you may be lucky or unlucky. I suggest that you follow the advice and keep your pages up on the old IP for a good while. Otherwise, I'd be more inclined to switch just after being crawled but I'm not sure if the the Freshbot can temporarily remove dead URLs.

The good news is that if you do disappear for an index or two then you should hop back afterwards as if nothing happened. (hopefully not two since Google reduce their DNS TTLs a while ago)

[LIUtilities]

What we are doing is that we change server but stay with the host so the DNS should not change. The only thing that changes is the IP number. How does this affect google?

[annej]

I've had two server switches this year. I didn't have anything saved on the old host and the switches went seamelessly for me. Maybe I was just lucky but I wonder if it is sometimes confusing for Google when you are two places and it keeps popping from one to the other.

It may have helped that both sites were well established with many links to them.

Anne

[ciml]

> How does this affect google?

Most browsers and ISP caches will notice the DNS change and visit the new IP after a day or two. Search engines have to visit very many IPs in the crawl (unlike an ISP proxy where people hit the same popular sites often). For this reason, engines tend to cache DNS for longer than other applications. Google seem to be quite quick these days, so hopefully you'll be fortunate.