Server transfer problem.

[John_Caius]

I've moved my site to a new server about a fortnight ago and set up a DNS transfer that went through in about 24h. I haven't done anything with the old site - it's still hosted on the old server but the DNS points somewhere else. However, two weeks on and Googlebot is still crawling the old server. Do I need to set up some kind of redirect as well as the DNS change and if so, how do I go about it? I know very little about server issues.

Thanks for your help. :)

[John_Caius]

bump

Anyone? ...or am I asking in the wrong forum?

[Woz]

Are other spiders finding the new server OK?
Do the users find the new server OK?

Once the DNS propegates then everyone should be finding the new server. Of course the question is why have the content on the old server? Once that is deleted then no-one should be finding the old site, just the new site.

You could put in redirects but you then run the risk of apparent duplicate content.

Onya
Woz

[mat]

There are innumerable threads on this issue - that of Google being slow to pick up on DNS changes - however, you're in the luckier-than-some-position of still having access to your old site.

Quite simply, monitor your new site closely until Gbot (and any others you're keen on) shows up in your logs, and then, and only then, delete the content from your old server.

Many, including G themselves, are claiming marked improvements in this area, but others still report waits of many weeks before G updates its DNS cache and starts to crawl a site with a new IP.

No need for redirects, just monitor your logs daily for bot activity.

[Nick_W]

>>Once the DNS propegates then everyone should be finding the new server

Not entirely true Woz. Google caches dns and this is why you're getting visits at the old server. The trick is to watch your logs closely and turn the old site OFF once you see Googlebot.

There is no fixed schedule that we know about, but they generally update DNS every 6-8wks

Nick

[Woz]

Ah, forgot about that. Thanks Nick.

Onya
Woz

[John_Caius]

Well Googlebot's visited and indexed some of the new site on the new server, plus the Adsense bot eventually found the new site. I'll remove the old files from the old server and see what happens.