Is the SERP ranking dive a temporary thing while Googlebot figures out what I'm doing? Anybody have anything like this happen to them?
I found this, which you may find helpful. http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=745921 The gist is that if the transition is a smooth one, and your site doesn't have any 'down time' (incase Google crawls at the same time), you should be okay. Did your site suffer some down time? Are your configurations the same as the previous host?
Though I haven't had experience with it myself recently, I can tell you that two years ago, we did this very thing, and we didn't lose a single ranking or any visitors. I know others, who have had negative experiences that they speculate had something to do with them switching their site, but I am not sure we can come to a positive conclusion about it. Hopefully, someone will have more information to offer you. I can also tell you that I have read a lot of posts on DP in recent weeks with regard to loss of Google rankings; which seem to have happened suddenly, and for no specific reason. Maybe your site is suffering the same fate. Best of luck!
must be a coincidence. changing IP should not have any impact on your ranking unless you moved hosting form one country to another and your site is geo targeted
I've seen rankings drop due to going from dedicated to shared (due to sharing IPs with tons of sites) but never vice versa. And for my own sites, I've noticed it doesn't matter a whole lot. I think your results dropping may be due to something else.