Changing Hosting Providers

[thebuzz]

I need to desperately change my hosting provider.
Can any one tell me what precautions regarding my positioning on the SE I should take before I make a decision. Up untill now I had a dedicated server now i'm thinking of moving to a shared server?
:confused:

[maartenvr]

It does not really matter too much for SE's if you have a shared IP or not. As long as that IP address does not get banned.

[thebuzz]

Thanks maartenvr
Is there any way to see if an IP has been banned?

[maartenvr]

Hmm. I used to know where to find out..But I would not worry about it too much. If you know other websites sharing the same IP and they have some PR, you should be fine!

[Dan0]

If you're going to do it, you want to avoid any downtime, especially when search engines come crawling. I'd shoot for completing it between the 15th-25th of the month, so that the new server is the only one answering for your domain when Google starts crawling.

Set up the new hosting account first, then do the DNS changes through your registrar. Let both hosting servers run simultaneously for at least 72 hours, to make sure the DNS changes have gone out through the entire Internet. That way, nobody gets an error when they try to access your site.

After the DNS propagation period (I recommend giving it 72 hours), cancel your old hosting account and make sure they remove their local DNS entries for your domain. If they keep acting like an authoritative name server for your domain, you can run into problems.

Some spiders (Googlebot included) have been reported to keep a DNS cache, and if they use the old IP address you don't want them to get a blank page, the hosting company's default page, or a 403/404 error.