Google couldn't access your site because of a DNS error

[BWIRic]

Hello,

We've being doing SEO work for a company for about 8 months and it's been working really well, we've lots of top threes and first pages.

Or rather we did.

Unfortunately the web host who the client uses (who to recommended them not to) has had severe DNS problems. For the last three weeks Google has been unable to access and index the website. I was hoping this was going to be a quickly resolved and everything return to normal. However this week their listing have totally dropped, 25 page one rankings has become none, Google Webmaster tools says 'Google couldn't access your site because of a DNS error'. Even searching for their own domain no longer works!

Does anyone know how this will effect the site in the long term? Once the hosts sort it out will the rankings bounce back. Is there any sort of strategy for handling this problem? Ideally we'd move host but I'm not sure that is possible so any other options, or advice on how it will affect long term rankings so I can report to my client would be appreciated.

Many thanks

Ric

[vayumedia-224580]

Hi BWRic,

Sorry for getting back to you so late, the problem seemed to be resolved but the website is having troubles again, anyway, thanks a lot for your help and advice.

Best regards,

Daniel.

[BWIRic]

Hi Daniel,

I'm afraid I don't know the specifics as the hosting company were very secretive and awkward. However what I do know is that their firewalls were incorrectly flagging Google as trying to perform and DDOS attack on the server. By this I presume they meant Google's spiders were being blocked. I don't know any more details than that but I hope it gives you a starting point to work from.

Regards

Ric

[vayumedia-224580]

Hi BWRic,

Could you please tell me how did you resolve the issue? I am having this very same problem with a website which I have been working on, I would really appreciate your advice.

Thanks in advance

Daniel.

[BWIRic]

A little update for everyone. The problem has been resolved now for nearly two weeks (seems the firewall thought Google was a DDOS attack!) so I've been able to monitor the early response. It looks like the site is bouncing back well to where it previously was.

[GeorgeAndrews]

Adam is right, downtime like this is unacceptable and this should be the card you play to convince the client to change hosts. You have the data you need (25 page one rankings dropped) to support your argument. The costs involved with moving to the new host will be worth it. Oftentimes you can even see hosting cost savings by switching to a better host.

If you can't move, yes your rankings should come back after the site is re-indexed. The only strategy I am aware of to handle this issue is to use a host that has more redundancy built-in. It doesn't sound like the local provider is able to provided this in-house and in the future they may themselves need to use an off-site location for hosting their servers.

[BWIRic]

The website seems accessible to everyone but Google, if it was fully down wwe'd get them to move ASAP. We're definitely going to try and convince our client to move again now we've some ammo!

The site is actually hosted with our local telecommunications provider and it wasn't just the web hosting that was effected, nearly everyone on the island where I live had very unreliable internet connectivity for a few weeks, they're just lucky they have little to no competition.

[AdamThompson]

3 weeks of downtime or DNS issues is an incredibly long time and is absolutely unacceptable for any webhost. I would say definitely move hosts. No matter what it takes, make it happen.

I would expect there will be little or no long term effect on the site's rankings, but I'm not 100% sure (I've never worked with a site that had severe uptime issues for more than a couple days).