Website transfers to new hosting company and is dropped by Google

Hello all,

I have recently made a somewhat disastrous move to advise a client to switch hosting provider. It has caused no end of problems with FTP, emails, accounts and so on.

But perhaps the biggest problem is when the site transferred to the new hosting company any trace of a Google Pagerank disappeared. The website has been online for many years and as such the owner is very unhappy that he is now on page 2, instead of his old position of page 1.

Does anyone have experience of this and why it has been dropped instantly from Google?

Thanks,
Phil
 
Was the xfer accross to the new hosting platform without interruption to service? as in there was no downtime on the site being accessible?

Additionally
has there been any work done to the files names, url structure and page content on the site?

If all that has changed is the hosting provider, you should find that the clients natural serps should return in time, however that's with the understanding that your clients competitors are not actively doing seo work.

If you can provide some more info, myself and others will be better placed to advise.
 
I've moved host (ftp and domain) several times and I've had no issue with google dropping rankings, in one case it's actually gone up.

It could just be natural google adjustment, they are changing some of the assessment criteria for 2010 iirc (Jazajay mentioned it)
 
Maybe it's a speed issue? One of the new things google are assessing this year is page load speed. But more likely competitors are actively doing seo work as Geoff says.

Things can change quickly with google results so it may have nothing to do with your changes. Tell them they need to start doing some seo, they can't expect do sit on page 1 of the serps by passively sitting there for several years.
 
I would more than likely say its down to the server change. Don't change anything give it a few weeks/or even possibly days and you will pop up as long as you aren't doing anything dodgy. :)

But lets run through the other reasons it can I suppose.

1. Server change, I was in charge of maintaining a domain about 7 months back after they got hacked, I reported it to the hosting compnay and they were like we will move it to another server and i was like no thanks, jease, as it is taken into account to make sure loads of other sites aren't linking from similar servers to your site, thus appearing unnatural. You are basically by the sounds of it being classed as guilty until they deem you to not be doing anything wrong, once they deem you to not be doing anything dodgy you will be back up.

2. Google will drop a site just before it wacks it up a few pages as well, it'll be out of the results for up to a week and then jump straight back to page one, I got contacted about that what 5 maybe 7 weeks back by a member on here, I told them not to panic give ti a week and bang on a week if I remember correctly they jumped from page 3 to page 1. You have to remember that new pages get indexed, pages get changed, these then have to be reevaluated and then their correct position determined. Only on Google is this that dramatic though.

3. Penalization.

4. Changing title elements, large amount of copy and H1's.

5. A competitor hacking your site and placing malware on it.

6. A mistake during coding and making a link the same as the background.

7. Freshness, if the site appears dead then over a month it can drop places.

8. You have custom search on and have visited loads of competitors over yours recently.

9. Robots.txt entry gone up for the page.

10. A 301, 302 or 307 set up.

11. Robots meta placed on the page.

12. Meta refresh placed on the page.

13. All links to it dropped.

14. Other pages are more relevant or have SEO's working for them.

15. The site has just accumulated loads of links all at once, that is unnatural for that sites history.

In this case it will be down to the server change and it will more than likely be back up soon don't worry.

Never panic when you lose rankings the first thing everyone thinks of is O crap it's this that I did today or yesterday I'll change it back or mass change a load of things which will then make it worst as most could be positive changes that you have just removed and Google then has to reevaluate the page, but 9 times out of 10 it's just that amazing engine known as Google. :rolleyes:
 
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