Need to change servers - what's the SE impact?

[cc976a]

Hi All,

I need to upgrade our hosting account - but to do this we have been informed it is necessary to move our entire site to a new server and change DNS too.

We can't upgrade or move forward with the site until we do but we also receive between 15k-27k uniques per month of visitors through organic listings so of course very worried this is going to affect our search engine position.

Anyone have any experience (good or bad) and whether this does impact your position?

Thanks

[david64]

Anyone have any experience (good or bad) and whether this does impact your position?

Thanks

The only problem you will face is if the person who is moving the site is very unsavvy when it comes to search engines and does something which will adversely affect the site. I've this this happen before - 4 months with the whole site excluded with robots.txt. Unsavvy web developers can also quite often bork up some of your on site SEO by not carrying redirects across.

Other than that, there is nothing that can go wrong so far as I am aware. Best thing to do would be to get a programmer who knows about this kind of thing to move it :D

[Delicious Webdesign]

Hi All,

I need to upgrade our hosting account - but to do this we have been informed it is necessary to move our entire site to a new server and change DNS too.

We can't upgrade or move forward with the site until we do but we also receive between 15k-27k uniques per month of visitors through organic listings so of course very worried this is going to affect our search engine position.

Anyone have any experience (good or bad) and whether this does impact your position?

Thanks

As long as your old / new server is in the same country and with the same hosting company I think you will notice no difference in SERPS, as long as they dont leave your site down for any length of time.

The differences would be noticed if your new host was in a new country or had poor performance and / or lots of spammy websites hosted on their servers.

[eventdomain]

You don't need to be with the same host, you can swap hosts without any complications whatsoever.

I don't know why others try to scare people with comments like "You'll lose your ranking if you swap hosts/excluding robots txt" etc - this kind of thing rarely happens, your site will be fine and it only takes 24 hours for the DNS to take effect anyway. A website can be uploaded by a new host in an hour, although it shouldn't take that long and if it did, you'd have the largest site in the world :D It's all about the size of the actual site.

I've owned quite a few websites over the years, and had few major problems, and none to do with hosting. Relax, its a fairly painless procedure for a half-decent web designer to host a site.

[OldWelshGuy]

you need to make sure the site is available at the old as well as the new servers for a little while. Google doesn't update its spider DNS as often as the web IE. google bot spiders by IP address rather than domain, and if you pull the domain from the old location before Google have pulled the new IP and propagated it, it can cause seo issues (temporarily). Once the spiders stop calling the old IP, it is safe to pull the site down. A month is normally enough of an overlap.

[FLAUK]

I recently moved a site to a new host without any problems.

Site was a year old, and moved from fasthosts to cs new media.

The move was easy enough and pages now load much faster than they did before. Didn't notice any great shakes with the serps.

[cc976a]

Firstly want to thank everyone who took the time to post. It is actually with the same hosting company. I'm only having to do this as I need make available files over 1MB in size to visitors. The current package I am on with the hosting company does not allow files over 1MB as it makes the unlimited bandwidth null and void.

I simply really just want to upgrade to a different package that did allow me to upload files over 1MB and cap the bandwidth. They do this but not as an upgrade - they literally have to set up a new account on a different server and I need to manually upload the entire website and transfer all sql tables across to new 'package'. Tad frustrating really!


you need to make sure the site is available at the old as well as the new servers for a little while. Google doesn't update its spider DNS as often as the web IE. google bot spiders by IP address rather than domain, and if you pull the domain from the old location before Google have pulled the new IP and propagated it, it can cause seo issues (temporarily). Once the spiders stop calling the old IP, it is safe to pull the site down. A month is normally enough of an overlap.

Would this not cause or trip a duplication filter on Google and therefore penalise the new 'site' under the new IP with the old still running?

The only problem you will face is if the person who is moving the site is very unsavvy when it comes to search engines and does something which will adversely affect the site. I've this this happen before - 4 months with the whole site excluded with robots.txt. Unsavvy web developers can also quite often bork up some of your on site SEO by not carrying redirects across.

Do I really have to worry about redirects if the first website is coming down? Perhaps I do need a redirect set up?


Thanks!

[david64]

Would this not cause or trip a duplication filter on Google and therefore penalise the new 'site' under the new IP with the old still running?

I think what OldWelsh is saying is to keep your current hosting package during the transition. So for anyone (including search engines) that may not have updated their DNS records, they will still be able to access something.

Do I really have to worry about redirects if the first website is coming down? Perhaps I do need a redirect set up?

What I meant by redirects is that you may have some redirects defined in .htaccess (if you are on an Apache server) or in other places. I've found that in some cases these have gone missing (been removed) when other developers have been working on a site or during a server move. That was all I was refering to.

If you are having a new site built that has a different URL structure, you will certainly need someone to have a look at the two sites to make sure external links are re-routed.

However, it's really unlikely you will have any problems when moving server. When I move, I don't take any special considerations. As mentioned, the only problem you might have is if someone makes a blunder.

[32cardinalpoints]

If you are moving your website to another web hosting company check that the server you are moving to can handle all the functions of your current website.

If your site is dynamic or you have a wordpress blog make sure you make a backup or export your sql dump before you move your site over.

In terms of SEO - I dont think much can go wrong apart from the downtime when the DNS propagates. This can take anything from 24 hours to 72 hours. Your rankings may go down slightly but it depends on how often the search engines spiders visit your website.

Good luck with your move and i am sure it will run smoothly if you pick the right hosting company. I would highly recommend 34sp.com based in Manchester as a web hosting company.

[OldWelshGuy]

If you are moving your website to another web hosting company check that the server you are moving to can handle all the functions of your current website.

If your site is dynamic or you have a wordpress blog make sure you make a backup or export your sql dump before you move your site over.

In terms of SEO - I dont think much can go wrong apart from the downtime when the DNS propagates. This can take anything from 24 hours to 72 hours. Your rankings may go down slightly but it depends on how often the search engines spiders visit your website.

Good luck with your move and i am sure it will run smoothly if you pick the right hosting company. I would highly recommend 34sp.com based in Manchester as a web hosting company.


Which is why I suggested the mothod I did :)

To answer the question asked by the OP. RE: duplicate content, nope, there is no duplicate content as the content is seen as being on the same page. It is a technical safety net nothing more. It prevents 404 errors being registered against the site.

[cc976a]

Thanks everyone!