I'm thinking about changing my web hosting company. Will that affect my SERPS, page rank, or SEO of my website? Please let me know if you have had experience with this. Thank you in advance.
In my experience NO if you make the move with no downtime. You need to get the site uploaded to the new server before you change the nameservers. If it is a databased site you will need to take it "offline" for a short period of time. A simple "offline for maintence will cover your downtime.
Just make sure that if you switch, it's to a host that has been in the industry at least 5-10 years Minimum with a proven track record. DNS may take 24-48 hrs to propagate, however you won't loose any of your Page rank or Serp's listings by switching Hosts (As long as they know what they are doing of course). I have personally switched 5 domains & had more clients than I can count switch (NONE had any issues with Rank lose due to the switch). Good luck to you.
Hmm id have to say that in my experience it can sometimes affect serps over time, a couple of my clients went from a local hosting company and switched to godaddy for ease of use for myself and them and it's boosted there SERPs by a a couple of places, i know a couple of places isnt much but from 12th to 3rd makes a huge difference to a business. I dont know if is was just a coincidence but to happen more than once on different sites it must have something init ?! Only thing i can think of off the top of my head is maybe they had some blacklisted domains hosting on there old hosts too ?
i don't think SE would penalize site for switch unless they blacklist web hosts that mostly host spam site.
You should be fine only thing that would possibly change your rankings would be to change your registry setting to another country such as spain, india or some where like that since search engines are geographically set.
I have changed hosts many times, I find that if the change is within USA it is ok, but if you change to UK and other countries, it does affect negatively.
In my experience yes, if you are with some web host which is down every day, you will loose all your search engine ranking in few months.
i think changing your host doest affect your site, your ranking unless you change your url, and.. make sure an be wise in changing your host..
This was a good question to ask. Got many helpful answers I was wondering about as well. I am thinking about switching hosting companies as mine has the worst tech support imaginable. Cheap does not equal good.