What Would Happen if Domain Name Changed but kept the Same IP

[webdev]

Dose anyone know how google would react if I changed by domain from a.com to b.com but kept the same IP address.

A.com is indexed in all engines good rankings etc...

Would this just transfer to b.com and after the next update the url would show as b.com or would I be starting from scratch.

Thanks

[DaveN]

Google does not care about the IP address the whole infrastructure is built around the Backlinks and those are to www. whatever .com not an IP address.

it would I be like starting from scratch.

DaveN

[EBear]

Not quite. From what I've seen if you keep both domains hosted at that IP and redirect a.com to b.com Google will treat them as one and the same and preserve the PR. However, Google will only list one of the domains and which one can be unpredictable and variable. Also, allow a couple of updates before all this takes effect.

[jamsy]

I agree with DaveN

Imagine the shared server scenario with many different sites all using the same IP address.

[fathom]

No not exactly.

Point DNS of the second domain name to host.

Send out link request change to all sites pointing to old domain letting them know the domain will change.

All pages at your site add the new domain name to a link anchor.

Google will superimpose links as it spiders and once getting wise to the change will automatically shift/split to the new domain.

You can monitor your backlinks to see which pages (internal/external) are not being credited to the new domain.

If all links on your site are relative links (not including old domain name) you will have zero ill affect.

Once all external links have changed to indicate new domain... you can dispose of the old if you wish.

Imagine the shared server scenario with many different sites all using the same IP address.

The key there is "many" not "two".

Government sites (tourism in particular) do this all the time. They are stuck with a gov URL but add a brand domain.

The backlinks of the brand eventually takeover the site and the gov eventually only has a root listing.

<added>check microsoft.com & microsoft.net backlinks they are both on the same IP's</added>

[DaveN]

fathom thats pretty much what we tried 6 months ago for a client switching a .co.uk to a .com. everything seemed to go okay until we tripped a dupe content filter and lost about 25% of the indexed pages.

the problem was tracked to deep linking where somebody had linked to www. whatever .co.uk/somepage.htm the dns still pointed the co.uk to the main folder and the page still exists so google saw a .co.uk and a .com showing dupe content the page was dropped for three months.

in the end we had to setup 302 and 301 on all the pages which had been deep linked and renamed the new to n_oldpagename.

My original answer was maybe to short but webdev asked what would happen if I changed from a to b not how to change with the least damage

DaveN

[fathom]

A hazard to be sure DaveN but I doubt it tripped anything.

The more likely scenerio would be the deeplink was a higher level page with many internal links off it.

As the site is credited to the new domain "but a single deeplink" draws page ownership to old domain - this separates lower level pages from a coherent link hierarchy. This smaller (one page domain) stuck between Top Level and Lower Level pages make the new domain appear much smaller.

External link requests first resolves this problem.

[DaveN]

there was over 2500 external inbound links only 30 - 40% changed in the first month , there are still over 600 pointing all the old co.uk.

DaveN

[fathom]

Sounds a bit like a family squabble... it's mine, NO IT's MINE! ;)

In your case I would suggest just parking the old domain... since web site owners are being tarty.

And than re-request -- you can find us here!