Loose rank after switching web hosts?

can changing web hosts hurt SEO?

[keyon]

Just switched from one cheapy web host to another cheapy webhost...and my page 2 results in Google went to page 10.

Maybe it's just coincidence. I don't know. I didn't think the particular web host you use was supposed to make that much difference. I had about 24 hours of downtime between the switch.

What's the current opinon on this topic?

[Marcia]

I've never experienced a problem with Google or Yahoo, and I do sometimes switch from one cheapy host to another. But MSN has lost a couple of my sites totally when I changed hosts, and they never got back in.

MSN just "lost" one of my best sites that had about 50+ pages indexed before I moved it this month.

[buckworks]

about 24 hours of downtime

That's likely the cause of the ranking shift.

It's usually a good idea to leave the site up at the old host so there's a few days of overlapping service when you switch. That protects you against downtime as the change propagates throughout the web.

[keyon]

buckworks...
If the lost ranking is due to 24 hours of downtime, can I expect my rank to eventually go back to where it was?

Or did I cause some permanent damage here?

[buckworks]

If the outage was indeed what disrupted the rankings they should recover, but of course there's no way to know for certain except to wait and see.

There could be lasting effects if you lost any links because other webmasters happened to notice that their link to you was broken. However, if you maintain normal work on link development you'd eventually catch up whatever you might have lost.

Other than letting a domain name lapse, no damage is ever permanent unless you let it be!

[keyon]

Thanks...
This is a new site, so no danger at this point in other webmasters deleting my backlinks. I've checked the few incoming links that I have, and they are okay.

Also noticed that my rank/traffic nose dive continued to take place a couple days after the 24-hour downtime...even though everything was up and running okay with the new web host. That seemed odd.

So other than this just being an unfortunate coincidence wth a change at Google of some sort, the only culprit I can really point to is switching web hosts.

I'm almost tempted to go back to my old web host. But I suppose I'll give it a little time to see what happens. Pretty dissappointing to go from page 2 to page 10.

[pageoneresults]

There is always the chance that you moved yourself into a "bad neighborhood" with your new hosting environment. I'd be checking to see just how many sites are on the server with you. Are you on a Shared IP? What types of sites are sharing that IP with you? Guilt by association.

Trusted Hosting Environments
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[keyon]

Went from Bluehost to Yahoo (and that's like going from night to day). Both have cheap hosting plans, but as you might know, Bluehost is Apache/Linux, and Yahoo is straight up Microsoft. I'm sure Yahoo has gazillions more people sharing their IPs. So I'm not sure if I've inadvertantly moved into a bad neighborhood or not. How would I know which web host has better neighborhoods?