Can changing a host provider impact search rankings?

[bronxpad]

I was wondering if changing my host provider would impact my search rankings on the major search engines?

[AlanBleiweiss]

If you leave everything else the same, and simply migrate the site to a different hosting provider the only way you can cause a problem (or alternately improve your situation) from an SEO perspective is related to bad neighborhoods.

So if your site currently resides on an IP or C block that's known to Google as having too many suspicious sites, moving it off and onto a "clean" IP or C block can help.  And moving it from a clean IP or C block to one that's bad can lead to your site being labeled and eventually you may suffer.

Second tier considerations are overall site performance and speed.  This isn't specific to changing hosts, but even server to server within a host.  If you get more reliability of up-time and site speed related to server calls, that can help as well.

[bronxpad]

Thank you for your answer. How can I determine if there are bad sites on the shared server?

[ProjectLabs]

What if you are moving host providers and are deleting all content and rebuilding the site from scratch with new content? Would you retain a lot of the link equity (assuming you used the same URLs as before).

[AlanBleiweiss]

retaining full link equity only happens if you keep all the content.  If you dump it and start from scratch, you may retain it for a period of time, however over time Google's system is going to re-evaluate everything and you will likely lose a lot of it.

Given current Google anti-spam intent I would also caution that you could very well send up major red flags if you do a mass replacement of all content.

[AlanBleiweiss]

A quick way to check is reverse IP lookup.  I routinely use the "You Get Signal" free checker. Just from domain names you can sometimes see right away if there's a lot of garbage.  You can then just click through to sites on that server and see what they look like.

That's only possible if you know the IP your site is going to be on though, and doesn't show you all the sites on a shared server, or within a C-block.

Consider the host as well.  Some hosts blatantly tout their SEO value beyond typical hosting provider marketing spin for SEO as a minor service.

So for example just do a search for SEO Host.  You can pretty much just stay away from every site in that search result.

If you go with a top tier well known hosting provider, you should be fine. But if you do, as soon as the hosting is set up, run the reverse IP lookup. If things look suspicious, immediately contact them and request a change to a different server or C-block in their system.