Can changing a host provider impact search rankings?
-
I was wondering if changing my host provider would impact my search rankings on the major search engines?
-
A quick way to check is reverse IP lookup. I routinely use the "You Get Signal" free checker. Just from domain names you can sometimes see right away if there's a lot of garbage. You can then just click through to sites on that server and see what they look like.
That's only possible if you know the IP your site is going to be on though, and doesn't show you all the sites on a shared server, or within a C-block.
Consider the host as well. Some hosts blatantly tout their SEO value beyond typical hosting provider marketing spin for SEO as a minor service.
So for example just do a search for SEO Host. You can pretty much just stay away from every site in that search result.
If you go with a top tier well known hosting provider, you should be fine. But if you do, as soon as the hosting is set up, run the reverse IP lookup. If things look suspicious, immediately contact them and request a change to a different server or C-block in their system.
-
retaining full link equity only happens if you keep all the content. If you dump it and start from scratch, you may retain it for a period of time, however over time Google's system is going to re-evaluate everything and you will likely lose a lot of it.
Given current Google anti-spam intent I would also caution that you could very well send up major red flags if you do a mass replacement of all content.
-
What if you are moving host providers and are deleting all content and rebuilding the site from scratch with new content? Would you retain a lot of the link equity (assuming you used the same URLs as before).
-
Thank you for your answer. How can I determine if there are bad sites on the shared server?
-
If you leave everything else the same, and simply migrate the site to a different hosting provider the only way you can cause a problem (or alternately improve your situation) from an SEO perspective is related to bad neighborhoods.
So if your site currently resides on an IP or C block that's known to Google as having too many suspicious sites, moving it off and onto a "clean" IP or C block can help. And moving it from a clean IP or C block to one that's bad can lead to your site being labeled and eventually you may suffer.
Second tier considerations are overall site performance and speed. This isn't specific to changing hosts, but even server to server within a host. If you get more reliability of up-time and site speed related to server calls, that can help as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why does a site that is worse than mine by every objective measure I can find, keep outranking me in search?
I’ve been working on educating myself about SEO all day, again. All-Star Telescope up in Canada. We have a competitor that consistently ranks #1 and I don't get it. Their site is full of duplicate content (straight copy and paste from the manufacturer site). They don't have any meaningful blog or video content to add relevance or value to their site. We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the the competitors page. Our site is slow, but theirs is slower. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page (a popular telescope). Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE: https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069?_pos=1&_sid=f0aa91cc2&_ss=r Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope?_pos=1&_sid=56abdabd4&_ss=r#description Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page. Here is our page: https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). The text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here, something that isn't being captured by the tools that I have. Is it simple the fact that they get more traffic? Is that why some people go and buy traffic? Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product: Celestron NexStar 8SE
Technical SEO | | nkennett
NexStar 8SE
Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
NexStar 8SE Canada We've worked with two highly ranked SEO's to try and figure this out, one in Canada, and one in the USA. I haven't seen a confidence inspiring answer from either of them. Posting on a forum is a bit of an act of desperation, I'll continue to work the problem, but it's discouraging to see the leader in my industry look like he's just phoning it in with his website.1 -
Fluctuation in Ranking for the keywords
We were ranking well for most of the keywords.These keywords were at first page i.e mostly @ 1st and 2nd position in Google.But we have put the following tag ie no index tag for our pages by mistake and after that the ranking fluctuated & fell down in Google search results as our pages were out of index in Google .We have removed the noindex tag after encountering the problem.Now I can see my pages are cached & indexed in Google after submitting to index in Google webmaster tool.Can I regain my ranking for the keywords and within how many days I would regain my previous ranking?
Technical SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
Is it better to have hosting that specializes in performance or have the host closer to you physically?
I am looking to change to a new hosting company. I am debating between taking a company that specializes in Wordpress and performance but is situated far from my users or a local company that might not be as good from a performance/speed point of view. Which do you think I should go with? My users are near Europe and the Wordpress hosting that I am considering is in the US.
Technical SEO | | JillB20130 -
Changing .html to .asp in URLs
Hi Mozzers, I have a question. The webmaster of a client of mine needs to make changes to some files which will effect the URL's. Essentially everything is staying the same but the end of the URL will change from .html to .asp. This is because the site will be dynamically loading content (perhaps from a database) (i.e. latest news to come from their blog etc..) In order to do this we would need to change the filenames of the whole website. (i.e. personnel.html would become personel.asp). Changing URLs can harm indexation but a small change to the end - would Google drop these pages? A 301 redirect is not possible from old URL to new. What impact would this have on Rankings? Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | Bush_JSM0 -
What can be the cause of my inner pages ranking higher than my home page?
If you do a search for my own company name or products we sell the inner pages rank higher than the homepage and if you do a search for exact content from my home page my home page doesn't show in the results. My homepage shows when you do a site: search so not sure what is causing this.
Technical SEO | | deciph220 -
How can i redirect a url that has % in it?
Google webmaster tools shows a 400 eroor for an old link that contains a 30% off in it. The problem is the % I would like to 301 redirect this link : http://www.geographics.com/Graduation-Stationery,-35%-OFF-Printable-Certificates-Blank-Gift-Certificates/c1353_1354_1359/index.html to http://www.geographics.com/Graduation-Stationery-Printable-Certificates-Blank-Gift-Certificates/c1353_1354_1359/index.html We do not know how to do this in httaccess. Can you please advise? Thanks a lot! Madlena
Technical SEO | | Madlena0 -
Site Hosting Question
We are UK based web designers who have recently been asked to build a website for an Australian Charity. Normally we would host the website in the UK with our current hosting company, but as this is an Australian website with an .au domain I was wondering if it would be better to host it in Australia. If it is better to host it in Australia, I would appreciate if someone could give me the name of a reasonably priced hosting company. Thanks Fraser
Technical SEO | | fraserhannah0 -
Website Ranking Issue
Hi, We have been performing our own onsite of offsite SEO along with external assistance and have ranked well over the years with minimal impact from Google updates. Howevr the last so called Panda update has affected us heavily pushing our main phrase 'web design melbourne' from 2nd to 7th where we have been for almost 2 months now on Google.com.au irrespective of onsite or offsite work. We have been trying to find signs of any onsite, IP, duplicate content, titles or other issues that may be holding us back to no avail. The only flag that Google webmaster tools is showing is a number of bad internal site links, which I think is a glitch with the CMS we are using. Even the SEO MOZ tool gives us a higher ranking compared to most competitors on page 1 of Google.com.au for our main phrase. The biggest difference between us and competitors is we chose to target an internal page specific to the topic rather than our homepage. With this sadi we have also reduced our keyword density and content quantity inline with the other sites homepages. Can anyone help shed some light on this? and perhaps something obvious that we have missed, or where we should be looking? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | paulsid0