20 replies to this topic

[Legends]

Hi All

New to this forum although I have been a reader for some months.

I have recently moved my site to another host after being established for nearly 2 years.

I have now lost all my SE positions with google and other engines.

Does any one know how long it will take to get back to where I was. I have plenty of inbound links from sites and directories.

Any advice or information would be appreciated.

Thanks

Ian

[kology]

Changing hosting companies shouldn't cost you rank assuming your ran your own domain.

If you switched domains, then you're at the mercy of the SE and that can be 3-4 months plus you've lost all your back links.

If you disappeared from the SERPs and you have your own domain, then perhaps your new hosting company is blocking the SEs from indexing in which case they can't see the site and will drop the site from their listings.

Did this happen immediately upon switching or a week or so later?

[OldWelshGuy]

HI Legends, you say changed hosting companies. I assume you moved your domain, and not something like moved from free hsoting to a new domain or anything? (forgive the dumb question)

It is unusual to just go pop from all the search engines when you move a domain name, normally, especially after 2 years, the SE's will cut you a little slack before dropping you. To have been dropped, they would have had to hit your pages a few times and got error messages telling them the domain is dead.

Check you logs to see if the spiders have visited, check how your new company handles domains, some do it really badly by framing your stuff within their own page, almost un noticable to the naked eye.

Check that youv'e not set the robots protocol file to disallow by error or something daft.

check your header response here
http://www.delorie.c...eb/headers.html

All the best
OWG

[Legends]

Hi

what has happened is that the SE positions that I had for keyword searches are now not valid, they show as no site found. So if someone types in a blue widget request my site comes in the top ten but when they click on it it returns the site not found error.

This happened as soon as the DNS propagated to my new hosts, earlier this week.

Funny thing is I still have my original google page rank on my home page but every other page is at 0.

I have checked about 50 listings on google, yahoo etc and they all appear the same, ie site not found.

any ideas?

[Randy]

Welcome Legends !

So to clarify...

• Your site kept the same domain name in the move between hosts.
• Your site is still listed in the SERPs.
• When you click on the link from the search engines you're getting a 404 Page Not Found error?

If that's the case everything should clear itself up fairly quickly. It sounds as if you've either change Nameserver information for your domain, which is often required when changing hosts, and/or your local ISP has not yet updated it's DNS cache.

This type of situation is normally a DNS update issue that can happen in several locations. The worldwide DNS servers will normally be updated within 72 hours. Local ISP-type cache's could take as much as a month to update, but it's typically not a major issue because the ISP's of your customers could have already updated.

This type of situation is why I always advise people to keep their site up at the old location for a month while everything updates.

If I didn't understand what's happening, especially if your listings in the search engines no longer show up at all, please update us with what you see.

[Legends]

Hi Randy

Yes thats pretty much the case. Monday this week I changed hosting companies, I kept the same domain name. The DNS update is now complete and fully on the new server.

So what your saying is that the cache problem will slowly resolve and things will get back to how they were, but may take up to a month.

I have noticed that visits to my website have dropped from 1000's per day to 100's, I know it is early after the change of hosting companies but I was not expecting such a drastic fall off in visitor numbers.

Thanks for your input on this matter.

Ian

[OldWelshGuy]

The problem you might have is that ISp's have their own DNS look up data records, they do this apparently to speed up response times (all dutch to me). So if you change the nameservers, then while the general stuff updates, some of them dont do it. This results in all of the users of one comapny (say Btyahoo internet for example), all get the 404 error, as they are being directed to the wrong place by the local dns.

I have had clients ring me to tell me that their site is down, I tell them that it isn't, they refuse to accept, untill I suggest they telephone a friend who is with a different ISp and get them to check it.

[Legends]

Hi

I can understand the cache problems being local, but why then, if that is the case, have my visitors dropped to below 10% of what they where before I changed hosts.

Seems odd, almost like everybody is seeing what I see.

[OldWelshGuy]

Until their hosting companies update their DNS records, (which the top ones normally do within 48 hours) loads of people will get the same thing.

10 % of your visitors are getting through, I suggest you take a look at the 10%, and compare that to the 100% of the old traffic and look for a pattern. I have to say though that I have never had this problem last more than 24 hours, in reality probably not tha long even.

[Ron Carnell]

When you go to any web site on the Internet, your browser needs to know the IP address where the domain lives. To get that information, it has to talk to a named server, a special server that stores at least a partial copy of the vast DNS database. Your browser is "probably" going to talk to the named server at your ISP (unless you override the settings in your connection). Chances are your ISP's named server won't have the domain/IP information, so it'll ask around and eventually find the named server that has it, which will likely be the named server your host set up for you. The host's named server tells your ISP's named server what IP address to use for that domain, and the ISP's named server passed that info back to your browser. Easy stuff.

Here's where it gets complicated.

If you go to another page on that same web site, it doesn't make any sense at all to go through that very long electronic conversation all over again. Your browser knows the IP address and won't even ask. If you go back to that web site tomorrow morning, your browser may have cleared it's local cache and forgotten the IP address. So it will, again, ask the named server at your ISP. That's where it gets interesting, because your ISP's named server will probably NOT ask around for the information again. It still has the IP address in its cache from yesterday. So it passes the data back to your browser. If you have changed hosts within that small window, the browser will have absolutely no idea how to get to the new IP address.

The big question, then, becomes how long will all those ISP named servers spread across the world keep an old copy of your DNS records? At some point, one would hope they would throw out the old info and go looking for an authoritative named server, just in case things have changed. And they will. But to at least some extent, they will do it in their own sweet time, and the only guarantee is that each will be different.

Generally speaking, about 99.9 percent of all the named servers in the world will have a new copy of your DNS records within 3 to 7 days. So, over the course of the next several days, your traffic should slowly increase each day as more and more named servers around the world learn your new IP address and can then pass it back to their browser clients. There will be a few who won't get your new address for longer, and some of those few can be important to you, which is why Randy (and I) recommends a month of running both servers together.

My advice would be to take a short three or four day vacation right now (otherwise, you'll just spend the time watching counters and fretting over what can't be helped. Patience, at this point, is really your only viable course.

I have to say though that I have never had this problem last more than 24 hours, in reality probably not tha long even.

How long the DNS record is cached, OWG, is largely controlled by the authoritative named server at the hosting company. Most set the TTL for 24 hours, which matches with your experience. Some set it for much longer to save bandwidth on DNS requests. When you know you'll be transferring a domain, it's a good idea to set the TTL to about sixty minutes, meaning everyone will update their DNS cache very quickly after you've moved.

[kology]

If you're using a windows machine and what to see if it's a DNS issue here's what you do.

Click on the start button
Then click on "Run ..."
Type cmd and hit the enter buttun.

You now have a C: (command prompt)

Type in "nslookup" and hit the enter key

Next enter your web site domain name (www.mydomain.com) and hit the enter key

What will be returned is the IP address of your web site

Is that your new or old IP address?

Hope this helps you out.

[Legends]

Hi All

Really big thanks for all your help and advice, but I think I have found the problem.

I have two domains registered same name but with extensions .COM and .CO.UK.

Apparently my old host had my site resident on the .CO.UK with the .COM pointing to it.

My new hosts have my site resident on .COM with the .CO.UK pointing to it, ie opposite way round.

I'm thinking that search engines will view this as a change of domains?

If this is the case, if i swap them around will everything settle back to normal fairly quickly?

Getting really frustrated

Thanks again for your input

[Legends]

Hi Guys

Sorted, my hosting company have changed the way the domains point to each other and suddenly everything is back as it was.

Thanks for all your help, it really help me find the problem and resolve this issue.

Ian

[tomsk]

Hi legends

I posted on the actinic site about the domain change and have been taken some stick for explaining how seo works people seem a bit up tight about it anyway good to see it sought out.

[cyberwire]

I had a similiar problem and totally fell out of google for about 3 months. I had to change my ips/server etc.. It was definitely frustrating and I feel your pain.