Switch hosting to be closer to site visitors, and 99% dropped from rankings?

[zpeti]

Last week I decided to switch for a UK server to a US one at Hostgator since most of my visitors are from the US.

About nine hours later 99% of my pages disappeared from google rankings, only a few non-relevant pages are at position 100-200. All decent (1000-2000 word) articles on specific topics, are gone.

These pages were getting 2-3 minutes per user of readership and a low bounce rate, so I think they were pretty good quality.

Does anyone think it's possible I got accidentally added on a blacklisted IP? Or why would something like this happen.

Since then, I've tried switching back to the old IP for 3 days, that didn't work. Now I've filed a reinclusion request with the details.

Has anyone had a similar experience? What can possibly cause this massive drop in rankings and traffic?

Any help is much appreciated!

[zpeti]

That was my first thought also, but no returns of rankings after 4 days now

[UnderRugSwept]

One other possibility--especially if some pages are gone completely--could be that Google decided to crawl it at the exact moment it was down. Since propagation can take up to 48 hours, you're going to have some down time in some locations. If that's the case, once Google crawls it a second time, you should go back to your old positions.

[loopyal]

Hello Peter.

Blacklisted IP is a possibility, but this is the kind of dance that happens when you move a site.

Another possibility is that this is the new reality.

I've had my site in google adsense since 2005.

I changed the company and they made me request a new adsense account and when I did that, they rejected my site so now I have no ads at all.

They seem to love destroying businesses, and there is no comeback and no way to talk to someone about it.