Effects of IP Address Changes

[markvredeveld]

We are about to change our IP address on www.condorentals.com - What effect if any will that have on our current search engine rankings? Is there something that needs to be done?

[Andilinks]

If the DNS switch is seamless with no down-time for the site there should be no effect whatsoever, rankings are assigned to URL's not IP's.

My IP changed recently with no effect on SE ranking.

Though if you are running scripts that are IP dependent that could cause a problem for your site if not attended to.

Andi

[markvredeveld]

Andilinks wrote:

"Though if you are running scripts that are IP dependent that could cause a problem for your site if not attended to."

We do have scripts. Our pages are "asp" dynamic pages and each page gives access to a search database. Different parts of each page includung some content come from other sources than the static HTML portion of the pages. Any concern or issue here?

[Andilinks]

Originally Posted by markvredeveld

Different parts of each page includung some content come from other sources than the static HTML portion of the pages. Any concern or issue here?

I would think that it would matter only if the scripts use the IP during execution and you could simply do a global search and replace with the old IP to the new.

But I am definitely not an expert on this, so let's hope someone more experienced with such scripting chimes in here to confirm or rebut this. I am going by what my hosting company wrote to us when all our IP's were about to change.

http://www.aota.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=17079


Andi

[thusmann]

Originally Posted by Andilinks

If the DNS switch is seamless with no down-time for the site there should be no effect whatsoever, rankings are assigned to URL's not IP's.

My IP changed recently with no effect on SE ranking.

Andi

This has been my experience as well. Changing IP addresses should not have an effect on ranking as long as both the new location and the old location have a copy of the site.

[rambodog]

There is the possiblity that the "neighborhood" the IP is in could affect your rankings. If it is a dedicated IP address it is less likely but with the typical use of name-based hosting today switching to the "wrong" hosting can affect a site. Not the most likely scenario but it can happen.

In our experience, we have changed hundreds and sites involving IPs and never noticed a change in rankings that could be attributed to it.

[JCMnetmedia]

Your scripts should run just fine, and so should your rankings. Most of the time scripts use either the URL or the server path, neither of which will change in your case.

As far as SE rankings, the only thing that would hurt is if you put it on the same IP as sites known for spamming. If thats not the case, you'll be fine.

Google punishes IPs only when you have a multitude of sites on one IP that are all linking to each other to create artificial page rank. I am not sure when or how they implement this, but I know it is something that is done.

I wouldn't sweat it, everything should be smooth as long as DNS is ok.

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by thusmann

This has been my experience as well. Changing IP addresses should not have an effect on ranking as long as both the new location and the old location have a copy of the site.

This is a good point. There should be an overlapping of Hosting. It does take time for the IP change to propagate thru all the DNS centers.

I am not sure were Google pulls it's information from. The best thing that I can suggest is to put some text onto the "new" IP hosted site that you can do search for at Google to see if they have picked it up. Once you are assured that they have, then you can cut the old Host loose. Make the search text something unique that has no chance of being replicated anywhere in the World.

Normally this process of changing IP's should take no more than 48 hours to completely propogate. But sometimes it can take longer.

[Andilinks]

My hosting company, FutureQuest, whom I cannot praise enough, overlapped considerably more when switching IP's. My site appeared on two IP's for four weeks.

In two years, I have experienced 100% uptime with FQ and while tech support e-mails sometimes go unanswered for as long as 25 minutes the response is usually under 5 minutes (I am not kidding).

Their prices are just slightly higher than average, I'm told. But the peace of mind is priceless...

No, I don't work for them or even have an affilliate link, I'm just an enthusiastically satisfied customer. This is why, when I was recently offered free hosting elsewhere, I declined.

Andi

[ronniethedodger]

Originally Posted by Andilinks

My hosting company, FutureQuest, whom I cannot praise enough, overlapped considerably more when switching IP's. My site appeared on two IP's for four weeks.

That is key right there. Sounds like these guys do a little extra above the norm. Well worth the few extra dollars too, because the bottom line is you get what you pay for.

[TrafficProducer]

A Change in hosting. I'm looking for a new host, the host I use is great, but the charge for the extra storage/bandwidth I'll be requiring make then uneconomical.

I wish to keep the same URL's

What is the correct way to swap/change hosts? Full exact details please.


Thank You

[TechEvangelist]

It is fairly easy to change hosting companies.

1. Set up the site with the new hosting company. Make sure that you set up new e-mail accounts, if necessary. If you have a dedicated IP address (highly recommended) you can access the site and test it using the new IP address that they provide.

2. Change the nameserver information. Your new hosting company will provide this. The nameserver information directs users to your new hosting company. The nameserver change is typically done through a maintenenace screen at your domain registrar's site.

3. Run both the old site and the new site concurrently. It can take up to 72 hours for the DNS (nameserver) changes to propagate across the worldwide domain servers.

4. Watch your server logs on the old site. Wait at least 72 hours and when there is no more traffic to the old site, the process has been completed.

Craig

[Mel]

Also change you DNS at your domain registrar.

[TechEvangelist]

By the way, I have moved many sites over the past several years. I've never seen a loss of rankings or PageRank.

I have seen rankings improve when moving to a dedicated IP address, so I highly recommned that.

Craig

[smakyyy]

I agree - i have moved quite a few sites and have never seen a ranking drop because of it. search engine is following the website not the IP.

[ewhitaker]

Hello everyone - I'm new to this forum.

I just moved three sites to a new IP address just 3 weeks ago. Although I have not noticed a change either, according to some of the top SEO companies, it IS recommended that you resubmit your site after a change in IP. I resubmitted all the sites just to be on the safe side.

Please read reason #8 from SEO Inc about moving to a new server. Are they wrong about this?

http://www.seoinc.com/seo-newsletter...newsNOVv3.html


Evie

[Mel]

While it is true that the bots have a list of IP addesses that is perhaps updated only once a week, they still use the standard DNS system to convert URLS to IPs.

When your DNS address is updated at your domain registrar it will propogate to almost all other domain name servers web wide in two or three days.

IMO there is no necessity to resubmit your sites when you change hosts or IP addresses as the system is set up to automatically update all DNS.

[ronniethedodger]

Yep, what Mel said.

I would like to add that the article in that link was a little misleading. Specifically, it would do no good to resubmit a Url even if the IP changed.

At worst, you could submit too early in which case the engine would go to the old IP again (if the IP had not properly propagated). And with Google (Mel says a week) but it could be longer. I am not sure how or who they get that information from, but for some reason I don't think they follow the norm on this.

And if the IP has resolved correctly ... what is the point? I don't know what the point is either way. One way is a mistake, and the other is redundant it seems to me. I fail to see the logic in it. Of course, I could be wrong. It might be something as simple as getting the engine to crawl a nameless IP address -- that is about the only thing I see happening.

[Mel]

Originally Posted by ronniethedodger

...
At worst, you could submit too early in which case the engine would go to the old IP again (if the IP had not properly propagated). And with Google (Mel says a week) but it could be longer. I am not sure how or who they get that information from, but for some reason I don't think they follow the norm on this...

Can't seem to lay my hands on the exact URL at the moment but I remember reading that Google operate thier own domain name servers and download only IP addresses to Bots to save them the time of looking up addresses and that these lists of IPs were only updated every few days .

[ewhitaker]

How do the search engines view sites that are all hosted on the same server but with dedicated IPs?

I have been told several different answers on this. We have many sites, several of which are hosted with the same hosting company, but all have their own unique IP.

Can Google recognize that these are on the same server and penalize us? Should we consider moving some of these sites? The IPs are all the same except for the last set of numbers.

Any views on this?

Evie

[Mel]

The IP addressing system allows the search engines to see both a site ID and a host ID. (for all you (n)ever wanted to know about this subject this site has a good description of how this works), and also the Domain Name Server of a hosting company will list all the domains that they host and thier IPs, and thus the search engines can see that they are hosted by the same company.

Recently Google has been granted patents which indicate that they are interested in eliminating the effect of internal and "related" links, and unfortunatly one of the methods of identifying such sites uses the Class C IP address (which has 256 addresses) as the dividing point.

But there is no reason to fear a penalty just because you have several domains hosted on a single IP address or server. It may be that in the future links between these sites might be discounted, but at present even this does not appear to be the case.

Now if you start seriously interlinking between those domains that could be another story.

[buddhu]

Originally Posted by ronniethedodger

That is key right there. Sounds like these guys do a little extra above the norm. Well worth the few extra dollars too, because the bottom line is you get what you pay for.

An exception that probably proves that rule:

I use a UK free ISP/webhost called Freeola. There is no cost for what they claim is unlimited webspace (and I've never been nagged over either the space I use or the bandwidth, and I run some reasonably large SQL cms sites - far larger than my hobby sites linked in my sig). The only cost I pay is a very low quarterly option for the SQL hosting. These people blow every paid host I ever tried out of the water. They are fast, reliable and helpful. There are human tech supps available on non-premium phone lines up until 8pm every day, and email support is prompt and efficient.

At the day job all hosting is in-house on our own servers. Our IT peeps have got six of the sites I designed on the same IP address. I was a little worried that this would affect SE ranking.

Do you guys reckon I'd get penalised if I were to have each of those 6 sites link to just one of the others?