Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Hello fellow warriors,

I am wondering if I will lose my web traffic and page ranking in Google if I change hosting companies. I signed up with this hosting company a couple or three years ago to host my business website, and works fine- I have no complaints. My dilemma is that, I have also signed up for this great reseller account with a different company where I am hosting all my other websites and they're awesome and very very affordable. So not only I am getting great support with this new company, but also is very affordable plus I can get tons of websites hosted there and have more control since they offer WHM.

I am hoping for some insights from you guys!

Thanks,

Henry

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

If your server is moved from the US to the UK or vise versa then your rankings will change to reflect the location of the server. If your new server is in the same country then you should have no problems.

Just ensure that your new server is all setup with a copy of your website files already installed. When you change the nameservers, your site will already be installed which would give you a smooth transition.

Hope this helps.

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Thanks bud!

Yes, actually both server are located in the US. So you're saying to copy ALL my website files to my new hosting account then go ahead and change the name servers? do you think I'll experience any down time at all?

Thanks again,

Henry

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

If you have the files ready to go and you have assigned the domain to your new account then once you change the nameservers, it should be instant.(once the nameservers have propagated) You should not experience any downtime this way.

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Any time you change a host you introduce the possibility of changing your traffic flow.

As long as the host is correctly configured and your site remains the same you should not encounter problems.

I have changed hosts on several of my projects half a dozen times over the years.

When I move any site I check my log files to see how often the Google bot crawls. Then I try to move the site inbetween crawls.

For the most part it shouldn't matter because a new address doesn't matter as long as the IP resolves correctly.

If you need to move your site just plan and do it.

As far as moving from one country to another... that would warrant further investigation.

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Thanks for your advice!

One more question, how do I know that name servers have changed? is there something I can do to check on that?

Thanks,

Henry

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

99% of the time, a simple change of a hosting company won't affect your ranking. As mentioned above, you need make sure all of your site files are copied over correctly, do testing to make sure they are all there, then update your DNS with your domain registrar (using the name servers given to you by your new hosting company)...then wait for DNS to "propagate" and you should be fine.

The 1% of the time I see ranking changes on hosting switches is when you move is if the new host has unreliable uptimes and your site gets indexed when the servers are down. The result would be the same if your previous host went down.

I lied, there is another 1% :).... and that's if you're switching technologies (i.e from HTML to php,asp, etc). If you webpages/functionality is changing and file extensions are changing, they you need to make sure you do a 301 redirect from your old pages to your new ones.

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

I think its already said up, what I've observed is if you have to change your server you must take your files within you complete nothing-less for you to have an less worry free while updating.

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Thanks Jeff,

Good advice...BTW pretty informative video on the linkwheel strategy...I kinda been doing something like that but without doing linkwheels within linkwheels.

Just sign up for the rest of the video to check that out!

Take care,

Henry

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Good info, Thanks!

Henry

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

as long your your web hosting still in same country it would not have impact, but if you change from uk to usa then it will decrease your ranking, but at least your PR still the same ;)

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

On this topic, I am thinking of completely redesigning my website on dreamweaver as opposed to having it compiled on a G - Site and it leaves so much for the imagination. I am growing the website now and want to continue growing the G site as by the time the website is ready all I will do is transfer my content over easily and boom upload my own site which I can customize easily. What I am saying is if i keep the website names the same, and make sure that the pages marry up, will all my search engine optimisation count? I mean the links will all be pointing to the right page.... right?

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Plain and Simple -- The answer is "NO" unless you are on a shared hosting account that is 'known' for spamming websites and doing black hat tricks. If not, you're safe.

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

Sorry was the NO to me, because I would take that as NO my links won't still count or was it NO you have nothing to worry about?!?

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

What matters is the domain name. If the seo/links you built for yourdomain1.com and now you put everything on yourdomain2.com, then it would be necessary to do a 301 to the new domain to keep the seo benefits. What is a "G - Site", by the way?

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

its a google site sorry, i set it up for my business and now am moving on... think a REAL site will do me the world of good. Basically I own the domain name and so am going to keep everything running to my site then swap the guts out if that makes sense?

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

i dont think so if you change you server from one country to another country that effect your ranking but if you site going to down then this will effect your website ranking.

Re: Will I lose my ranking in Google if I change my hosting company?
 

It will not effect your rankings if you change server country. You will have the same place in google rankings.