Help. Changed IP and lost 90% of traffic in Google

We moved our site to a new IP and traffic has dropped 90%. It is hurting us so badly that we are thinking about moving it back.

How long should we wait? Even when you search for our site by its name it doesn't even come up until the 7th page. It is not deindexed, just really penalized for moving IPs.

Please help.

Its been 8 days now and no return. It is like it triggered a sand box again.

 

Did you move it to a shared hosting account? If you're site is on the same IP as a bunch of spammy/blacklisted sites, it may not look favorable in the eyes of Google.

Put it on a dedicated IP to be safe.

 

I agree with what scar said. It can also have been a spammy ip in the past for another site.

 

I concur as well. Go dedicated or go home. ;D

 

Don't worry..
It's just a temporary change if you are using a dedicated IP.

 

I think too that you moved a server where there is spam. It is always suggested to have your own IP address. If you share your IP with other people, you are at risk.

 

HI,

Actually IP change will not effect Google PR or Keyword position if you follow the Google guidelines.

Find Google guidelines at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=34437

Your problem comes bcoz of DNS down time.

So, it will rectify around 1-2 weeks if you do regular promotion.

More concentrate on SBM.

It helps a lot.

If you penalized, your listing not appears even in 7th page. Listing appears around last in the total results.

I think your site is not penalized.

 

Move it back to the orginal ip and hope google reindex's your site.

 

I agree with karpok. It will take approximately 15-30 days to get back to where you were in rankings. It happened to Squidoo once before too -- they changed their ip and all of their sites were nowhere to be found. Many angry squidooers ranting and raving until things finally settled down. Took about 30 days.

 

While moving IP's shouldn't effect things, stranger things have happened. You may want to switch back just to have peace of mind.

 

Karpok is right. It's a temporary thing, everything will be back to normal in 2-3 weeks.

 

I've red about that a while ago on Matt Cutts blog I think and I remember he said it's recommended not to change the IP

 

Some people say 2 weeks others say 4 weeks. While others say moving IPs doesn't effect anything.

Well, consider this to be an excellent confirmed case study. We moved IPs Last Thursday, Today is Tuesday making this the 10th day we are nowhere to be found for our site.

We earn about $200 a day profit from our site by selling advertising. Thus we have lost $2000 so far for the move.

We have asked for a manual reinclusion from Google too.

Will report if and when it comes back.

 

Well it definitely matters if you change IPs -- for anyone who says different has never physically done it. It WILL come back eventually -- for the majority it should take around 15-30 days as has already been stated. However, there is no guarantee for a time limit -- it could take longer. You just never know with Google.

The problem is that you're now in a sticky situation -- if you go back to your older IP, you might make things worse because it might disrupt the indexing process yet again. Google may have already started to update their index with your new IP. Going back may start the process all over again, which is obviously something you don't want. I wouldn't take that chance if it were me.

Sorry to hear about your nightmare. That's a lot of money you're losing, no doubt. Oh well, it's a hard lesson to learn -- but at least now in the future you'll know what to expect when planning ahead.

 

Did you change only the hosting IP, or did you also change the design?

Jeff

P.S. - Ditto on cheching the new IP for spam issues.

 

Everything your reading here is speculation, so your going to have to filter out what you believe... the facts are your site was doing well before you changed the IP, and every 10 days your loosing $2000. I don't know the business reason why you would have changed the IP, but I’m sure it was necessary.

1. If you revert the IP back you could be prolonging this fluctuation, because reasons others noted above.
2. If you ride this out you may bounce back any day.

Personally, I will be faced with making some IP decision in the near future. Please keep all of us posted on which direction you choose and the final out come. Also, I should note - I've changed IP recently and Did Not see any impact on search engine position.

 

Personally i believe that ip's have nothing to do with PR or SERPS. I believe if you had long time getting your site live from one server to another then that might be the case.

 

Getting advice from Google on the way they rank is wrong. Google isn't hear to help you, because that helps spammers. The fact is that a change in DNS, shows very important things. The most noticeably is that site ownership/control is different It doesn't necessarily mean that the domain changed, but Google might view you as suspicious.

I don't think changing the DNS of sites is a good thing. I'd keep it to a minimum. Your site will probably bounce back though.

 

You may check if your site is deindexed by google. Usually it takes around 1 week for your site to get back it's position in google.

 

what you believe is not based on experience. Changing IP does matter for SERPs, more then half times traffic drops.