Does changing nameservers negatively impact SEO?

[reeljerc]

Had to redirect the nameservers to the hosting account in order for the domain email addresses to work.  Since then, search results have dropped from the first page to second and much lower with the same keywords.  Does that make sense?

Another change was redirecting approx 10 parked domains to the main site, was that a mistake?

[eyepaq]

When did you do this change ? Maybe it's not those set of changes but the farmer update ?

You should first perform the farmer update test (depending were are you located).

If that dose't prove to be the reason for the drop you should look elsewhere but, in my opinion not to the two changes you've mentioned above.

The name server change/update can be a bad signal only if done regularly (a lot of spammers do that when they get black listed with a current server ip set) but if you do it once or very rare it shouldn't be an issue.

As for the parked domains, if you did a 301 redirect and the domains are clean - no bad history, again it can't be an issue.

That's my opinion - if someone has another view I am very interested in hearing it - I'll be tracking this post.

Thanks.

[reeljerc]

I hadn't heard of the farmer update, thanks for the tip.  After researching it, this could definitely have contributed.  My client had previously had SEO work done by a company that relied heavily on Article Marketing and it also appears that they submitted the site to a multitude of link farms.