moving site to different server?

[kalidust]

Does moving a site from one server to another affect its current SEO rankings for any reason?

[WebSavvy]

Hi Karen,

Moving to another server doesn't affect your rankings. What happens is, when moving you are assigned a new IP address at the new location Vs the IP address that you used in your previous location.

It may take Google one or two updates before they attribute the new IP address to the domain. During the interim you may suffer a loss of a few pages in Gs index while the transition is taking place.

After things have settled any lost pages will be reindexed and should resurface at their previously held position.

[bigDugan]

I never had a problem with this.

[kalidust]

Thanks for the explanation Deb :)

[JuniorHarris]

If only the IP address is changing (and DNS servers), then I wouldn't expect it to loose any listings (or rankings). That is, as long as both sites remain online until the DNS/IP changes have propagated. If the domain name and pages are the same, then it really would not matter if the page is loaded from x.x.x.x or y.y.y.y, as long as the request was fulfilled. The key is ensuring both sites remain online until the logs of the older site reflect none or minimal referral traffic based on domain name. At that time, it would probably be safe to retire the old site.

Shifting Servers (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10870&highlight=dns+remain)

[strangerrr]

If you run new site up and test it on the new server and then change the hosting over... search engins won't even notice.

[Webmaster T]

I agree with Junior it is important that you maintain both sites for a period as some DNS servers on major networks seem to take ages to update their records. It shouldn't affect rankings at all and Google should figure it out almost immediately. I believe it is the only major using IP's the others AFAIK are using domain names so they shouldn't be a problem.