April 19, 201214 yr Hi guys Hopefully a basic question, but I cannot find an answer online. I am looking to move my music website, including the domain, to a new host. I've never moved a .co.uk domain before and the process looks quite complex. I sort of have two questions. #1 Is there downtime when the domain name is transferred aside from the change in nameservers? i.e. when the process is instigated, will my site go down? Or does the domain suddenly start pointing to the new nameservers once the DNS updates? #2 If there is going to be some down time, what's the effect going to be on my SEO? This particular site, about 80% of traffic is organic. Losing that would be devastating. I understand my site may disappear off Google temporarily, but will it come back pretty much as it was? Frankly, I am quite scared about moving this site because it means so much to me that if anything goes wrong it could get pretty distressing. So if anyone can shed some light on these issues and re-assure me I'd be very grateful. Cheers chaps.
April 19, 201214 yr hiya, if you make sure the DNS settings are an exact replica on the new dns, and you make no other major changes in the move everything will be fine. i've had to move hosts a few times in a year for about 10 websites owned by one company, the only time rankings were lost was on one due to a totally new design... lost rankings for a day, and was back the next above where we were... allthough unrelated i hope it shows they can be quite nimble in dealing with big changes so if example.com/my-page.htm has the same content and design, the move wont adversly effect you. moving hosts is a fairly common thing and search engines under stand this
April 19, 201214 yr I'm not sure tbh Mike, however I just found Matt Cutts speaking about this issue on his blog http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/moving-to-a-new-web-host/ Not sure if it helps, but it is a daunting task moving host. Good luck!
April 19, 201214 yr Author if you make sure the DNS settings are an exact replica on the new dns But they won't be because the host is changing so the domain name servers will change and can't stay the same, no?
April 19, 201214 yr Author I'm not sure tbh Mike, however I just found Matt Cutts speaking about this issue on his blog http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/moving-to-a-new-web-host/ Not sure if it helps, but it is a daunting task moving host. Good luck! It does help mate, but the problem is none of these guides take into account moving the domain also. They just talk about changing the DNS, but never about actually transferring it, which I feel is perhaps going to add a whole 'nother dimension to the task and possibly bring about further down time. I'm just wondering if transferring a domain brings about down time between it pointing to the old host and new host, other than the obvious DNS change. Does that make sense?
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