A Search Engine Roundtable Forums member wonders if there is any consequence of having his IP changed on a website that ranks pretty well. Will the rankings plummet? Is this risky?

Members believe that a simple IP address change should not have any impact. However, moving to another hosting provider can be risky in terms of script execution and operation (you wouldn't necessarily want to have a PHP5 compatible site be moved to a server that runs PHP4, for example). You also may not want to move to an IP that hosts banned sites. That's a given.

Last year, Barry wrote about this and says that when moving providers, you should follow these three steps:

(1) Make sure all files are properly moved
(2) Make sure the site functions properly
(3) Try and keep your old site running on the old IP for two weeks after switching

Number 3 is most important . As he says, "search engines run their own domain name servers (DNS), and those servers don't always update their records as quickly as other DNSs."

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Roundtable.

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