Same domain name, same pages, new HOST

how to keep the spiders happy

[mcjohnson]

I am moving a client's site from his former host to mine. Nothing is changing except the host server.

he has pretty decent rankings for some key search terms and I want to make sure I protect those rankings.

Is there any danger that Googlebot and others, when they come calling afterthe nameservers have been changed, will arrive at the old site? If so, if nothing really has changed, is there any danger of losing ranking?

I have looked at the 301 Redirect, but I am not sure it's appropriate in this case, as the names/URLS etc are not changeing.

Any thoughts, etc would be greatly appreciated on how to properly make the transition smooth.

Pat

[Quadrille]

Providing the transition is smooth (ie the site doesn't get dropped for a few days!), then there should be minimal damage - just the one interruption as the new setup propogates across the web - absolute maximum for problems should be about 48 hours; it's usually much, much less, and rarely noticed by the SEs - and recovery if they miss a spidering is certain at next visit.

All that is assuming that both hosts are in the same country, else different rules apply.

[edited by: Quadrille at 1:01 pm (utc) on Aug. 18, 2006]

[jdMorgan]

Simply keep both servers online during the transition. This should be easy if the site is static. If the site is dynamic, though, it can be a problem; You might consider ways to at least keep a few of the major pages working by leaving just those on the old server.

If this is a major-traffic e-commerce site, then one way to prevent problems is to set up the old server as a proxy for the new, using the new server's IP address to specify the proxied server. This is only possible on a non-shared (old) server over which you have full control, though.

Jim

[BananaFish]

All you need to do is to run bother servers concurrently for about 2 weeks to 1 month, once the DNS is changed. If the site uses a database, both sites will need to connect to one database, which will be running on the new server.