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.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      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. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Website rankings drop significantly after moving to new hosting provider

    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.

    Website rankings drop significantly after moving to new hosting provider

    Web Design
    3
    7
    3011
    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.
    • IsaCleanse
      IsaCleanse last edited by

      My website - www.isacleanse.co.nz has dropped from being top10 rankings for all of my keywords to not even being in top 50 after just checking now.

      It used to be hosted on: www.1stdomains.nz
      It got migrated to Sitground servers about a month ago

      See attached screenshot - would moving hosting provider cause such a huge drop? Or would there be anything else I should be looking at ?

      J2ahi

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • IsaCleanse
        IsaCleanse @FrankViolette last edited by

        Now that I check rankings for isacleanse.co.nz (without the www.) the keywords are all ranking in the same spot they used to be... so what I can gather there is no issue but instead my 'rank tracker' for keywords within MOZ was updating the rankings for a www. when the rankings have now moved to the non www. site?

        Does that make sense? I've now reinstated back the www. before the domain name as I prefer it this way.

        I will still make those changes that you've mentioned above! Much appreciated

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • FrankViolette
          FrankViolette @IsaCleanse last edited by

          Make sure that you are doing 301 redirects from your www links to your new non-www links. This will tell search engines where the new pages are.

          IsaCleanse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • PenaltyHammer
            PenaltyHammer @IsaCleanse last edited by

            Not as important reason as the rest I mentioned. Correct all and will be fine.

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

              Thanks for your responses Frank & Krzysztof!

              From what I can tell the site has been migrated and is now showing as isacleanse.co.nz and it used to have a www. before it - would this be the reason for the drop?

              PenaltyHammer FrankViolette 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • PenaltyHammer
                PenaltyHammer last edited by

                Hi Sandi Matic.

                Indeed, server location is in US and that matters.

                On the other hand I see in google search result versions of your website: with www and without www. I see also this at the end of google results:
                "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 89 already displayed.
                If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
                so this means you have some amount of similar content.

                In code I see this: but your website is dedicated to New Zealand right? Change this (and all other) to en-NZ. Setting hreflang can help too.

                Also you have little amount of linking domains (weak or weaker domains after new penguin 4). Worth to do is linkbuilding.

                Another errors are meta descriptions are part of main content, heading h1 doubled, etc. To check all, page by page seo audit is needed. Even if you had it before, now you have to fix those onpage things to get better serps/traffic.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • FrankViolette
                  FrankViolette last edited by

                  I only see 2 reasons for your rank to drop like this after switching servers. Your site is slower after the move and your servers location(not sure about this one, maybe someone else can confirm).

                  #1 - Site speed is a key factor  for ranking so if you had excellent speed and you switched to average speed, this could be one of the cause.

                  Did you notice if your site is slower after the move? And how long after the move did your rank start dropping?

                  #2 - If your server was in New Zealand and now it's, lets say in the US, there is an added respond time for people looking for you website in New Zealand.

                  Do you know in which country is the new server located in? A good CDN might help if that's the issue.

                  I hope this points you in the right direction to get your issue resolved!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • 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

                  • StillLearning

                    Website Redesign and Migration to Squarespace killed my Ranking

                    My old website was dated, ugly, impossible to update and a mess between hard-coded pages and WP, but we were ranking #1 in the organic searches for our key words. I just redesigned my website using Squarespace.  I kept most of the same text on the pages (for key words) and kept the same Meta-Tags and Title Tags for each page as much as possible. Once I was satisfied that I had done as much on-page optimization as I could, I changed the IP in our Domain Name Registry so that it would point to our new website on the Squarespace host.  And our new website was live! ...Then I watched in dismay as our ranking fell into oblivion. I think this might have something to do with not doing any 301 redirects from the old website and losing all of my link juice. Is this the case?  And, if so, how do I fix it? Our website url is www.kanataskinclinic.ca Thanks

                    Web Design | | StillLearning
                    1
                  • Dynata_panel_marketing

                    Are non-breaking spaces ( ) in keyword phrases bad for ranking

                    Hello all, I came across a tip for avoiding text orphans in responsive design by putting a non-breaking space between the last two words. While this works nicely, I was wondering if I did this inside of a keyword phrase, would it still rank equally as well? Or will it be viewed as separate phrases or terms? Thanks, Roman

                    Web Design | | Dynata_panel_marketing
                    0
                  • Discountvc

                    301 Redirect all pictures when moving to a new site?

                    We have 30,000 pictures on our site. Moz will return 404's on some occasionally, but Google seems to ignore those. Should I 301 redirect all those images when we move to a new site lay-out? Appreciate your views!

                    Web Design | | Discountvc
                    0
                  • JaanMSonberg

                    SEO strategy for UK / US websites

                    Hi, We currently have a UK-focused site on www.palmatin.com ; We're now targeting the North American market as well, but the contents of the site need to be different from UK. One option was to create another domain for the NA market but I assume it would be easier to rank with palmatin.com though. What would you suggest to do, if a company is targeting two different countries in the same language? thanks, jaan

                    Web Design | | JaanMSonberg
                    0
                  • InvoqMarketing

                    Duplicate content on websites for multiple countries

                    I have a client who has a website for their U.S. based customers. They are currently adding a Canadian dealer and would like a second website with much of the same info as their current website, but with Canadian contact info etc. What is the best way to do this without creating duplicate content that will get us penalized? If we create a website at ABCcompany.com and ABCCompany.ca or something like that, will that get us around the duplicate content penalty?

                    Web Design | | InvoqMarketing
                    0
                  • TinaMumm

                    Learning Center on Subdomain or New Domain

                    Hello, With so much emphasis for SEO to develop unique, information content I am working to build out a "Learning Center' for one of my clients in the finance industry. As you can guess, this is quite a competitive space and their rankings have become somewhat stagnant so we are looking for new ways to develop original, share-worthy content for the site. So my question is, in order for them to retain the most SEO value should we develop this on a subdomain such as learning.website.com or a new domain altogether. Note: We do not want to develop this under the current site domain as it we want o only post informational content & courses and keep these pieces outside of the "sales" side of their website. Therefore, I thought the subdomain would be the best bet so that we would retain the most value for SEO... however, some of my colleagues disagree. Some vote it should be within a directory under website.com. Some say a new site & domain altogether. My vote is to place this under a subdomain such as http://learning.website.com with the idea that the site's authority will influence the root http://website.com. The argument I was provided against the subdomain was: "essentially adding a subdomain would mean you're sort of starting over again in terms of building authority.  adding a folder will ride the coattails off the already established authority." Lastly, for clarification, the current domain is set up as http://website.com so the subdomain would be http://learning.website.com, the directory would be set up as http://website.com/learning/ and a whole new domain would be http://newwebsite.com. This is for a Wordpress site. Thoughts?  All feedback is much appreciated!

                    Web Design | | TinaMumm
                    0
                  • WebmasterAlex

                    How to make sure category pages rank higher than product pages?

                    Hi, This question is E-Commerce related. We have product categories dividing products by color. Let's say we have the category 'blue toy cars' and a product called 'blue toy car racer', both of these could rank for the keyword 'blue toy car'. How do we make sure the category 'blue toy cars' ranks above the product 'blue toy car racer'? Or is the category page automatically ranked higher because of the higher page authority of that page? Alex

                    Web Design | | WebmasterAlex
                    0
                  • 1SMG

                    3 Brands, 3 Services, 3 Different Websites Right?

                    My client was told that having 1 website for 3 different brands/services is better than having 3 websites. I need your help to prove my value to a new client.  This client has worked with Reach Local on PPC for some time and when they first got started the Reach Local Markering Consultant told this cleint that they needed to have one site for better SEO purposes. The client was told that Google ranks websites higher if they have more paid traffic going to them.  I've been doing this for long enough to realize this does not help ranking, at least not enough to make a difference. Keep in mind this is for 3 different companies.  One company does plumbing, another electrical and the last one does air conditioning.  They also have  4 locations but only two locations have mutliple services opperating out of them.  I understand these 2 location will not have there own Google+ Local / Places listing.  Using the same address for 2 different business and expecting a first page ranking is just not possible. Right now when you visit the clients website you see a logo that rotates with a banner section that follows the logo rotation.  First you see the AC Company and then the Plumbing etc.  I see this as confusing to the end user and it is more work to get it ranked for SEO.  I recommended that we build 3 speerate websites for each service and just list out all the addresses that the company services on the contact page.  I would also design inside the footer links to the other services for branding purposes. Please share your thoughts on how you would handle this if you were doing the SEO for your own 3 different business services. I really appreicate any input/insight to this.  Thank you so much in advance!!!!

                    Web Design | | 1SMG
                    0

                  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
                  • Digital Marketers
                  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.