Can changing the host affect Google rankings

[Ian J]

I have a site optimized for a particular niche area of factoring which has always ranked in the top half of page one of Google for the keyword phrases that it is optimized for since I set it up three years ago.

It has been hosted as an add on domain to my main site's hosting package with UK2 but as I have moved my main site away from UK2 last month I also moved the other site to a completely different UK host having bought a hosting package that is complete overkill for this four page Wordpress site.

After three years at the top the site has suddenly dropped to the bottom of page two for the main keyword phrases and even worse for others.

As the only change that I have made is to change web hosts so is this enough to affect the rankings so drastically or is it just co-incidence

 

[UKSBD]

Have you always had the same robots.txt?

Disallowing Google access to your js and CSS files can effect rankings.

 

[ServWise]

Changing hosts should not in theory effect your page ranking unless there was some trouble migrating the site, was there any considerable down time? Did any files change in the process? Have you run the site through Google webmaster tools to see if there are any spidering issues?

 

[Ian J]

No down time at all as far as I recall. The migration went very easily and I've just checked with Google webmaster tools and there are no errors, messages or warnings there at all.

Robots.txt says:-

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/

 

[zigojacko]

Yes, changing your hosting can affect rankings. How the server is set up, and what resources or fine-tuning your website needs/uses affects page speed which is a ranking factor.

It's unlikely to have any negative consequences if your moving from a server that was correctly configured to a new hosting company that knows what they are doing and also has a server correctly configured and with it being Wordpress, it's likely to not cause a problem but that doesn't mean it can't happen and that it isn't possible to affect rankings by changing your hosting provider.

There are lots of factors at play potentially, some of which that have been mentioned above.

Downtime? DNS location? Server location? Same site/any changes? etc etc

 

[adamo]

Definitely. If you move from a lightening-fast web host to a cheaper one which crams as many accounts as possible onto each physical server, it's very possible that your rankings could drop, since site speed is ranking factor.

 

[Ian J]

If you move from a lightening-fast web host to a cheaper one which crams as many accounts as possible onto each physical server, it's very possible that your rankings could drop, since site speed is ranking factor.

I actually moved it to you

 

[avecSys]

Ouch!

 

[Ian J]

Incidentally it's not the site in my signature as I've noticed a few people clicking on the link in this thread

 

[MASSEY]

Are you sure that you sat in the top half of google? Unless you know how to stop google customising your searches, and do various other things like changing your search location to uk as opposed to your local area, it can often be difficult to determine what your true rank is unless you have an analytics package that shows where you sat when you got the click, provided the searcher wasnt logged into google.

When i last did this i set up a hosting account with a new company, uploaded the site to it and then pointed the domain name at the new hosting and for a period of time i had two results showing in the serps, with no position loss.

I think for it to be anything to do with hosing it would have to be mega slow hosting which hangs the page forever to see such a drop.

 

[Ian J]

I check search positions regularly not only by checking on Google myself but also with Serpfox and Web CEO

 

[MASSEY]

Well it is odd. Add the link into your signature here or drop the link in a post so that google will crawl it quickly and see whether your site returns to where it was.

 

[Optimise-u]

Possibly if you didn't migrate properly you created some broken links and that would damage you but that really shouldn't happen, should be easy enough to check that.

Other than a drastic speed change or a long down time could affect your rankings - if you moved to a cluttered server for example but again not as much as you are describing.

 

[Ian J]

I don't think that it is a speed issue as if you click on http://factoringconstruction.co.uk/ it loads up fairly quickly

 

[MASSEY]

I don't think that it is a speed issue as if you click on http://factoringconstruction.co.uk/ it loads up fairly quickly

Your sitemap appears to be the same content as what is displaying on the homepage?

Was it always like this or what there a sitemap with links?

I would 404 your sitemap anyway, you don't need sitemaps for very small websites.

 

[MASSEY]

Another thing, , your homepage content is further duplicated when you click the title which takes you to an inner page with the same content.

You seem to be suffering from a bad case of duplicate content to be honest... that's probably why your rank has tanked.

 

[astoller]

Download the panguin tool and lay it over your traffic stats.(graph)
If the fall in traffic co-incides with a panda or penguin update then that woudl be your problem, not the fact you changed hosts.

If that is the case then ask again about how to fix panda or peguin issues

 

[altonroot]

Download the panguin tool and lay it over your traffic stats.(graph)
If the fall in traffic co-incides with a panda or penguin update then that woudl be your problem, not the fact you changed hosts.

I know this tool which can help to find if website is penalised or not. http://feinternational.com/website-penalty-indicator/
But it uses SEMRush data so interpret result according to that.

 

[munaworks]

Its highly unlikely that changing your hosting will affect your rankings. It most likely is some external issue or minor changes to Google's algorithm that would have affected your rankings.

 

[Tin]

Hi Ian

Change of hosting can affect rankings without a doubt but if it were me I'd revisit the home page copy and re-evaluate how I'm using my keywords in the head and body section. It's way too heavy handed but I accept you probably have had it that way for a while and still ranked higher up.

Just adding something into the mix that hasn't been mentioned, that's all.

Ray

 

[OldWelshGuy]

We are talking about a month period is that correct? One of the most common mistakes people make is they upload the site to the new server (host), switch DNS & then (the mistake) drop the ball by taking the old site down on the old hosting.

Google spiders by IP NOT domain, it periodically checks DNS records, so might well take a month or more to actually propagate the new DNS/IP combination around its data centres.

To this end you should always have the site live on both the old IP & New IP until Googlebot stops hitting your old IP, then and ONLY then is it 100% safe to remove it.

Could this be the case with you?

 

[Ian J]

Could this be the case with you?

Quite definitely as I took the site down on the old host as soon as it was up and running on the new one. Hopefully it will creep back up in time then

You learn something new every day.

 

[Ian J]

Change of hosting can affect rankings without a doubt but if it were me I'd revisit the home page copy and re-evaluate how I'm using my keywords in the head and body section. It's way too heavy handed but I accept you probably have had it that way for a while and still ranked higher up.

Thanks for that Ray. The copy hasn't changed significantly in the years that the site has been live and oddly enough I wrote the text in as natural a way as possible for people to read and not to fool search engines.

I will take your comment on board and try and remove some of the excess keywords

 

[ronnie7272]

As the only change that I have made is to change web hosts so is this enough to affect the rankings so drastically or is it just co-incidence

Check to see if Google's cache is of your current website or errors from the migration. If the current Google cache of your website is errors then you have temporarily lost your onsite optimisation. If this is the case you can either wait for Google's cache to catch up or make use of your Google Webmaster Tools account and make a request for Google to fetch and render your website.

There are many reasons why migration can affect rankings and this is just one of them.