My host has been experiencing quite a few hiccups over the past few weeks. During these downtimes, I'm getting mySQL errors. I'm thinking that if bots are crawling my site, this would knock them off and that can't be good. So, hence my question: Does down and issues related to hosting affect your SERP's? TIA
It depends. If Google spiders see the MYSQL errors rather than your actual site, they'll think you've moved on Yes, that would hurt you
It will kill your site if bots come by regularly and find 404's. Especially if your index is down, that will get you dropped like a dirty dish rag. I would get a different host. D
Dont scrimp with your host. to googlebot, a down site is a dead site and will be removed from the index until the next crawl.
I'm going to research a new host and/or upgrading my plan with the current host. They have been great in terms of responsiveness to my problems -- but at times it's a daily occurence that I get mySQL errors.
Not only the above things: I once had a webserver that had hiccups. It was only for short times, and my serps didnt really change too much I thought. They seemed stable. Later when I moved the server and was online all the time I noticed the bots crawled me twice as much and my serps raised! I dont have much experience because I moved of course, but I think that if google notices hiccups, it might rank you lower just because of the downtimes! Even if it can crawl you lots of times! Also if you have downtimes you probably have slowloading times as well. Those have been multiple times shown as a fact. Faster websites, have higher placements.
I had a site go down for two weeks, three weeks, and four weeks at separate times and it never lost its rankings.
Well, enough evidence for me. I'm moving. I hate seeing drops in SERP's and this will at least alleviate one possible reason. I needed more speed anyway and a VPS will offer that. FWIW, I chose PowerVPS after doing my research. Jury is still out...but hopefully I'll see what others have in them. Thanks for your feedback.