Google SERP changed domain to old IP owner!

google serp ip address domain name

[micron]

Hi there --

I'm hoping someone may be able to shed light on this mystery for me...

I have a site that has ranked in top 1-3 results for specific keywords in a geographic region, with hostname MyDomain.

Recently, I had to change from a shared IP address IPold to a dedicated IP address IPnew at hosting company MyHost as I was adding SSL.

For some reason, my Google SERP are now showing the domain name NotMyDomain associated with the previous owner of IPnew at MyHost.

Unfortunately, this has disastrous consequences:

Click through on SERP now fails because NotMyDomain results in a DNS lookup error (MyHost no longer hosts this customer anymore).

NotMyDomain has an adult-oriented name that will damage the reputation of the business

I have struggled with this and cannot figure out why this happened or how to address it. At first I thought it was due to a 302 Redirect Hijack, but because of the IP address history, I don't believe that to be the case.

I was considering requesting a new dedicated IP address from MyHost, but haven't because:

I'm not sure that this would solve the problem (since I don't understand how Google got confused)

I'm worried about loss of ranking through multiple IP changes

I haven't found a good way to search former Hostnames associated with an IP address to ensure that I don't run into the same problem with NotMyDomain2 that could be equally as bad

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!

[buckworks]

This sounds like the same problem I experienced recently, which I was able to solve with help from some good folks in private conversation.

I had changed hosting for a certain site, which meant it was on a new IP, but a couple of old domains owned by someone else were still pointing to that IP. Because our site was the default for the IP, those other domain names were displaying our content. One of the domains was showing up in Google searches, likely because they had some old backlinks. I spotted the problem after noticing some odd referrers in Google Analytics.

After my friends helped me figure out what was happening, the solution was to look up the domains' owner (same owner for both domains) and ask him to update the hosting information for those domains. He was apologetic; the situation was a housekeeping oversight on his part, nothing malicious. The domains stopped showing our information as soon as he updated the DNS info, and within a week Google had restored the real domain to searches where it rightfully belonged.

If you weren't lucky enough to get cooperation, there are things you could do with .htaccess to redirect users to the real domain if the content is being displayed anywhere else. I'll let someone else more technically savvy share the instructions for that.

[micron]

Thanks -- I think you might be right!

The whois for NotMyDomain shows that they are indeed pointing to MyHost's nameservers, and that their domain doesn't expire for another year. Since they are no longer a customer of MyHost, it looks like they didn't "clean up".

I'm surprised that more people don't get tripped up by this (I haven't seen it discussed elsewhere).

I've tried contacting the admin contact shown in whois, so hopefully it'll be valid and they'll kindly fix it. Of course their domain registrar says that they can't do anything as people are allowed to point to whatever nameservers they like.

If it looks like I can't get through with the admin contact, I will request a different IP address (but how can I ensure I'm not switching to another "zombie" IP address? hopefully multiple switches of IP addrs is not going to hurt SERPs, either)

I am very thankful for your response, buckworks!

[micron]

Just a quick update: buckworks, you were absolutely right.

The whois info turned out to be invalid, so I had to then migrate everything to a new server with a different IP. Google SERPs now reflect my domain, with the same positioning as before.

Thank you! I am very grateful.