Transfering hosting

[Pippafruit]

Hi there. I am seriously considering moving from my UK based reseller hosting service to webhostingbuzz. I have a couple of concerns that I hope you can address for me please.

The first is that I have been advised that if I host UK based business websites on a USA located server this could have a negative effect in search engine rankings for people based in UK searching for UK companies - apparently the ranking of the site would appear further down the page if it is on a US server. Any truth in this one?

My second concern is about transferring my existing websites. You'll have to forgive my ignorance as I am a novice web designer. I understand that to move hosting it is necessary to change nameservers and that this can take up to 72 hours. It would be a serious problem for my sites to be offline for this length of time. Is there anyway to redirect them to a temporary location on the web by uploading the files to another ftp site and redirecting the url to point to that site, then when the new hosting is available on webhostingbuzz cancelling the redirect?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Matt R.]

Hi,

Thanks for considering us for your needs.

It is a well established myth that different IP addresses and geographic location affect your SEO rankings. We have not found that different "C classes" or geographic locationaffect this, instead how well your site is optimized will. .co.uk domains fare better in Google.co.uk too.

We are on the east coast of the US so are very quick to the UK.

In terms of transferring your site, it is quite simple to do. If you are coming from a Cpanel based web host, we can even do it for you. Just use the backup function in Cpanel then upload to our servers and we'll restore it.
If not, then it still isn't a problem, just download your files locally then reupload them to our server and change nameservers once complete.

[Pippafruit]

Thanks very much Matt for your reply. I am reassured that moving hosting to the US will not affect Google rankings.

My one remaining concern is the time lapse when changing nameservers - it would be very bad news for my clients' sites to be unavailable for anything more than a nominal amount of time. I understand that changing nameservers can cause a site to be unavailable for up to 72 hours. Is there anyway around this problem?

[Alan B]

My one remaining concern is the time lapse when changing nameservers - it would be very bad news for my clients' sites to be unavailable for anything more than a nominal amount of time. I understand that changing nameservers can cause a site to be unavailable for up to 72 hours. Is there anyway around this problem?

Yes. First, transfer your sites to the new server. Second, change the DNS information (nameservers). A week or two later, cancel the old host. There will be no downtime, as both new and old locations will be available during propagation.

Even better, since you have a reseller account, edit the DNS zones now to reduce SOA values. That will reduce the amount of time required for propagation.

[Pippafruit]

Even better, since you have a reseller account, edit the DNS zones now to reduce SOA values. That will reduce the amount of time required for propagation.

Thanks Alan for your great advice. I understood it all except the above! I don't have my reseller account with webhostingbuzz yet because I wanted to get answers to these questions before signing up - but can you explain what is SOA values please?

Thanks

[Alan B]

You misunderstand. You would not touch the SOA values in the new WHB account, because that would have no effect on current propagation. You would need to reduce SOA values at your current host.

If you're not familiar with editing DNS zones, then you can skip this step. You can cause failure of your domains if you make mistakes because you don't understand the DNS zones.

[Pippafruit]

Thanks Alan, yes I think I'll skip that last step as I have no clue!

[Alan B]

If you allow a couple of weeks overlap between old hosting and new hosting after changing to the new nameservers, that will take care of propagation for the vast majority of servers. Your clients should see no downtime.