Emergency duplicate of website due to DNS failure - how to minimise loss of search engine traffic?

[smaavie]

Hi,

Our client has had a disaster with their domain name registrar, where the DNS settings have been reset and it looks like the registrar won't be able to re-instate the DNS settings for four days time.  This is a nightmare for lost business whilst the site and emails are offline.  As a fallback, we've setup a copy of the client's website at an alternative domain name so that people can be directed there in the meantime via Facebook posts, etc.

Is there anything you would recommend we do in the meantime to minimise the loss of traffic from search engines, and loss of reputation with Google? eg. using Google webmasters to tell Google about the change of address?

Thank you.

[RobMay]

Sorry to hear it. Been there, and had to deal with it also! Read this over to help you understand the best practice. It's a great learning piece that will help going forward SEO Redirection practices and the SEO guide to HTTP status Codes by Dr. Pete. Another great piece and article.

It sounds like the a 302 temporary redirect is the best practice if you are only redirecting the site for 4-5 days. Then you can remove the redirect after the site is back up after the DNS failure taking place.

Cheers!