Changing Hosting Companies - Site Downtime - Google Indexing Concern
-
We are getting ready to switch to a new hosting company. When we make the switchover, our sites will be offline for a couple of hours and in some cases perhaps as long as 12 hours while DNS is configured -- should we be worried about Google trying to index pages and finding them unavailable? Any fear of Google de-indexing pages. Our guess was that Google would not de-index anything after just a short period of not being able to find pages -- it would have to be over an extended period of time before GOOGLE or BING would de-index pages -- CORRECT?
Just want to gut check this before pulling the trigger on switch over to new hosting company. We appreciate input on this and/or any other thoughts regarding the switch over to new hosting company that we may not have thought of.
Thanks,
- Matt
-
thanks, good resource
-
There's an excellent blog post about this at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-handle-downtime-during-site-maintenance too.
-
Thanks, appreciate it.
-
I would say it is preferable to go ahead and setup the site on the new host first before you take down the old one. While you should be "ok" with the downtime, I would not recommend it. You never know when the spiders come along. You would probably not be de-indexed, but Google would see a bunch of errors and you could potentially see a drop in the SERPS and then traffic to your site as a result. This should all recover.
I have seen on our sites drops in traffic when we have had technical difficulties. I usually see issues in GWT or other tools and I get them fixed and the traffic comes back.
Here is the other thing. What if something goes wrong during that 12 hours? What if 12 hours becomes 24, 48 etc. due to unforseen issues. That is just bad for business/users in general when a site is down for any amount of time. You do not want that, let alone the search engine issue. What if something goes wrong with the new host and you need to revert back to the old? This has happened to me and trust me, you do not want this to happen to you. Murphy likes to play games with scenarios like this, I do not mess with Mr. Murphy and his laws.
If I were you here is what I would do
-
setup the new host
-
setup your site on the new host
-
test test test on the new host
-
change the DNS from the old to the new host
-
watch the traffic move
-
test test test on the new host
-
shut down the old host
We have overlapped for up to 2 months with old and new hosts just to make sure everything is set. You always back up your data yes? Why would you not want to have a backup with your entire website?
Good luck!
-
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
-
Site still indexed after request 'change of address' search console
Hello, A couple of weeks ago we requested a change of address in Search console. The new, correct url is already indexed. Yet when we search the old url (with site:www.) we find that the old url is still indexed. Is there another way to remove old urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
Does google index the mobile version or the desktop version?
We use different headlines and text on our mobile site vs. the desktop. Our desktop headlines and text is highly optimized for SEO purposes, but because of user experience and space limitations the headlines and text on the mobile version isn't great for SEO. I'm wondering, what will google look at and will it make a difference? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Postable0 -
Google Search Console - Indexed Pages
I am performing a site audit and looking at the "Index Status Report" in GSC. This shows a total of 17 URLs have been indexed. However when I look at the Sitemap report in GSC it shows 9,000 pages indexed. Also, when I perform a site: search on Google I get 24,000 results. Can anyone help me to explain these anomalies?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richdan0 -
Why this site is not hit by google penguin only experts answer please
Hello I know a site which has the following things and it is not hit by google penguin at all and is ranked on first page first link in google.com.pk it has 1.3K total backlinks its has 34 referring domains according to ahrefs the exact match keyword which is ranked in google.com.pk as first position is used in 1.2 K backlinks its DA is 18 and PA is 31 its citation flow is 19 trust flow is 13 targeted exact match keyword is present in Title and description also. Now tell me what is happening here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tanveerayakhan0 -
Can Google index PDFs with flash?
Does anyone know if Google can index PDF with Flash embedded? I would assume that the regular flash recommendations are still valid, even when embedded in another document. I would assume there is a list of the filetype and version which Google can index with the search appliance, but was not able to find any. Does anyone have a link or a list?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andreas.wpv0 -
Google Indexing Feedburner Links???
I just noticed that for lots of the articles on my website, there are two results in Google's index. For instance: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html and http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebhostinghero+(TheWebHostingHero.com) Now my Feedburner feed is set to "noindex" and it's always been that way. The canonical tag on the webpage is set to: rel='canonical' href='http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html' /> The robots tag is set to: name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> I found out that there are scrapper sites that are linking to my content using the Feedburner link. So should the robots tag be set to "noindex" when the requested URL is different from the canonical URL? If so, is there an easy way to do this in Wordpress?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Sites interlinked - how much changes to make at one time
Hello, A client has their main site interlinked with 3 other of their sites. The main site is not ranked as high as it should for the main term, which the the anchor text used in all 3 interlinking sites. They're having a main sitewide link changed to nofollows today. Should we worry about doing too much at the same time? I'm thinking about either taking off the interlinking or changing it to brand anchor text.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Google is indexing wordpress attachment pages
Hey, I have a bit of a problem/issue what is freaking me out a bit. I hope you can help me. If i do site:www.somesitename.com search in Google i see that Google is indexing my attachment pages. I want to redirect attachment URL's to parent post and stop google from indexing them. I have used different redirect plugins in hope that i can fix it myself but plugins don't work. I get a error:"too many redirects occurred trying to open www.somesitename.com/?attachment_id=1982 ". Do i need to change something in my attachment.php fail? Any idea what is causing this problem? get_header(); ?> /* Run the loop to output the attachment. * If you want to overload this in a child theme then include a file * called loop-attachment.php and that will be used instead. */ get_template_part( 'loop', 'attachment' ); ?>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TauriU0