Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Changing Server IP Addresses. Should I be concerned?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Changing Server IP Addresses. Should I be concerned?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4
    4
    3446
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Robbie8299
      Robbie8299 last edited by

      Hello Mozers

      Our site has been on a dedicated server for about four years now. (no other sites, just ours on the server)

      I have made the decision to move it to a much better and faster server than the current server we are on for more than one reason.

      My big fear is Google will lose trust for my site because of the IP change. Ip's stay with the server at 1and1 they do not follow the website.

      So, I have done my due diligence and copied over all code and databases and have tested it completely to insure there are no issues when I change the DNS to point to the new server.  Made sure 1and1 is giving me an IP that has never been used, I am Keeping the old server on until cached DNS records expire for it.

      Is there anything else I need to do to make sure I do not lose current rankings in Google? I have heard nightmare stories about making these kinds of changes but at this point for our site there is no turning back this is a change that must take place.

      Any pointers and advice would be much appreciated!

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • StevenvanVessum
        StevenvanVessum last edited by

        Hey Robbie,

        Of course you're never entirely sure what Google will do, but if you're only changing host - nothing else - you should have no problem.

        Do not:

        • Change ownership of the domain;
        • Make any major content changes (such as titles);
        • Add large chunks of content - keep it to a minimum;
        • Make any website template changes;

        It's very important that all that's changing is the host. And of course keep an eye on your rankings while doing the migration. Perhaps use a SEOmoz campaign for that. They also do crawl tests so that should be good.

        Good luck!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BlueprintMarketing
          BlueprintMarketing last edited by

          If you are only changing to a new hosting provider and you had a dedicated server as well as a dedicated IP. In the content will not be changed there’s not much to worry about at all. Google not lose any trust in you because of an IP address change if you are changing to a white listed IP. the only ways you could actually hurt your site would be if

          1St If you moved from a dedicated server to a shared server and had a bad neighbor

          "Google recognizes the server’s IP address. If the majority of websites are of ill-repute (porn sites are automatically marked as spammers), then unfortunately this law-abiding client gets lumped in with a bad crowd. Read more: http://online-sales-marketing.com/seo-issues-caused-by-bad-neighbors#ixzz22SZ2T5cA 
          Under Creative Commons License: Attribution”

          2nd  if you keep both sites up at the same time obviously you get duplicate content. You want to index the new site as soon as possible. Thus inform Google that will allow the Google bot to crawl it and therefore like Google no you are no longer on your old IP.

          3rd  you could move to a slower host I noticed not talk about right often however slow DNS and slow web hosting both play a role in how Google rank your website. I hope whatever deal you made you are on a host that can provideThe same or better speed at delivering your content. Obviously if you lost a content delivery network or happen to luckily add one those types of things matter to Google. You can check with tools like http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ or http://www.webpagetest.org  I tend to use the hosts SEOmoz recommends in their pro perks you cannot go wrong with any of them.

          4th make sure your DNS is as good if not better it should be better if you’re moving this will keep speed up and problems to a minimum. Here a list of hosted DNS providers http://dns.nuvvo.com/lesson/12509-list-of-hosted-dns-providers  I use ultraDNS and DYN if you are looking to use a provider with any cast DNS and not spend much money at all and still have fantastic speeds Amazon Route 53 is a couple dollars a month on average and has an excellent reputation. http://aws.amazon.com/route53/

          I hope I have been of some help in just remember people who don’t have dedicated IP’s rank extremely high regardless of the IP address changing.

          Sincerely,

          Thomas Zickell

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • CleverPhD
            CleverPhD last edited by

            Generally speaking, if you transition it correctly, have the exact same site up and running on the new IP before you change the DNS you should be fine.  I did some Googling on the subject, and Mark D. has a much more specific and detailed description of what you should do as far as making sure you have the exact same site running

            http://malteseo.com/seo/changing-ip-address-without-losing-google-ranking/

            What you do not want to do at this point is change up your URL structure, title tags etc.  Those changes alone can impact your rankings and you don't want to compound the issues.  Less change, more gradual change is always better.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Modi

              After Server Migration - Crawling Gets slow and Dynamic Pages wherein Content changes are not getting Updated

              Hello, I have just performed doing server migration 2 days back All's well with traffic moved to new servers But somehow - it seems that w.r.t previous host that on submitting a new article - it was getting indexed in minutes. Now even after submitting page for indexing - its taking bit of time in coming to Search Engines and some pages wherein content is daily updated - despite submitting for indexing - changes are not getting reflected Site name is - http://www.mycarhelpline.com Have checked in robots, meta tags, url structure - all remains well intact. No unknown errors reports through Google webmaster Could someone advise - is it normal - due to name server and ip address change and expect to correct it automatically or am i missing something Kindly advise in . Thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi
              0
            • Motava

              Other domains hosted on same server showing up in SERP for 1st site's keywords

              For the website in question, the first domain alphabetically on the shared hosting space, strange search results are appearing on the SERP for keywords associated with the site. Here is an example: A search for "unique company name" shows the results: www.uniquecompanyname.com as the top result. But on pages 2 and 3, we are getting results for the same content but for domains hosted on the same server. Here are some examples with the domain name replaced: UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE
              ftp.DOMAIN2.com/?action=news&id=63‎
              META DESCRIPTION TEXT UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
              www.DOMAIN3.com/?action=news&id=120‎
              META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 2
              www.DOMAIN4.com/?action=news&id=120
              META DESCRIPTION TEXT2 UNIQUE DOMAIN NAME PAGE TITLE 3
              mail.DOMAIN5.com/?action=category&id=17‎
              META DESCRIPTION TEXT3 ns5.DOMAIN6.com/?action=article&id=27‎‎ There are more but those are just some examples. These other domain names being listed are other customer domains on the same VPS shared server. When clicking the result the browser URL still shows the other customer domain name B but the content is usually the 404 page. The page title and meta description on that page is not displayed the same as on the SERP.As far as we can tell, this is the only domain this is occurring for.So far, no crawl errors detected in Webmaster Tools and moz crawl not completed yet.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Motava
              0
            • PuzzleZoo

              Cons and pros of changing your e-commerce store domain name?

              We have an online toy store, the domain is old over 10 years and we have some traffic, we are considering to change our domain name. There are two reasons why. First of all, we expand our product category, before we were only a puzzle store now we sell almost any kind of toy. And at this point, our current domain, PuzzleZoo.com is not representing our capacity. We also have toyzoo.com domain registered, that is also an old domain but there has been no activity with that domain. Our concern is, how do we avoid to lose ranking and keyword authority, are we going to start from the ground? What are the correct procedures to follow during this switch if we prefer to switch? As an alternative scenario, if we decide to keep both and open another e-store with toyzoo domain name and continue operating PuzzleZoo.com, with same products, will taht be a duplicate issue? If it is what are the consequences? (Just to add a note here, our  PuzzleZoo is also a small brick and mortar store chain in CA and TX) ToyZoo will only be an online store. Even in this case at the eyes of Google, are we going to have a duplicate store that can potentially be penalized or PuzzleZoo being a brick and mortar store chain might help us to avoid being penalized? Should we switch the domain and redirect PuzzleZoo to ToyZoo, should we keep them both and running separately? We need to give a decision and I was wondering if there are any expert here that can give us a good intelligent advise on which path to go?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PuzzleZoo
              0
            • Atomicx

              Google is displaying wrong address

              I have a client whose Google Places listing is not showing correctly. We have control of the page, and have the address verified by postcard. Yet when we view the listing it shows a totally different address that is miles away and on a totally different street. We have relogged into manage the business listing and all of the info is correct. We dragged the marker and submitted it to them that they had things wrong and left a note with the right address. Why would this happen and how can we fix it? Right now they rank highly but with a blatantly wrong address.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx
              0
            • BrianAlpert78

              Can I make 301 redirects on a Windows server (without access to IIS)?

              Hey everyone, I've been trying to figure out a way to set up some 301 redirects to handle the broken links left behind after a site restructuring, but I can only ever find information on 2 methods that I can't use (as far as I can tell). The first method is to do some stuff with an htaccess file, but that looks like it only works on Linux-based servers. The method described for Windows servers is generally to install this IIS rewrite/redirect module and run that, but I don't think our web hosting company allows users to log directly into the server, so I wouldn't be able to use the IIS thing. Is there any other way to get a 301 redirect set up? And is this uncommon for a web hosting company to do, or do you all just run your sites on Linux-based servers or your own Windows machines? Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrianAlpert78
              0
            • Thos003

              Server Migration, Does it effect SEO?

              About to go through a server migration. My intitial thought is that a change in servers shouldn't really change my rankings. But I've heard rumors... Can a server migration change rankings? Why?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Thos003
              0
            • bizzer

              Changing a parent category and 301 redirecting

              I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows: mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets mysite.com/directory/widgets-services The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides" In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it: mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those. I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course. My question is: Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting?  Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer
              0
            • nicole.healthline

              Soft 404's from pages blocked by robots.txt -- cause for concern?

              We're seeing soft 404 errors appear in our google webmaster tools section on pages that are blocked by robots.txt (our search result pages). Should we be concerned? Is there anything we can do about this?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline
              4

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.