Periodic DNS Switching for Major Website Updates - Any Downsides?
-
A company is performing some major updates to a website and the proposal to go live with the updates was explained as follows:
Once the updates are done on the testing environment and the site is ready to go live, we switch the DNS to the testing environment and then this testing environment becomes the production site. And the old production site becomes the new testing environment.
Are there any potential negatives to this?
Is there a name for this technique?
Of course, we've already considered :
- additional hosting cost
- potential performance differences- reinstalling and setting up server settings - SSL, etc.
-
I don't understand how we'd lose traffic...some visitors would see old site and some would see new site until fully propagated, right?
The problem with changing DNS is an initial traffic drop as routers/hubs/ gets the update.
Quote REF: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/moving-to-a-new-web-host/
Step 3: Change DNS to point to your new web host.
This is the actual crux of the matter. First, some DNS background. When Googlebot(s) or anyone else tries to reach or crawl your site, they look up the IP address, so mattcutts.com would map to an IP like 63.111.26.154. Googlebot tries to do reasonable things like re-check the IP address every 500 fetches or so, or re-check if more than N hours have passed. Regular people who use DNS in their browser are affected by a setting called TTL, or Time To Live. TTL is measured in seconds and it says “this IP address that you fetched will be safe for this many seconds; you can cache this IP address and not bother to look it up again for that many seconds.” After all, if you looked up the IP address for each site with every single webpage, image, JavaScript, or style sheet that you loaded, your browser would trundle along like a very slow turtle.
If you read this page you'll see Matt Cutts tested mattcutts.com himself and did not see any major impact. However, Matt Cutts has a high profile domain since he is well known for talking about his experience within Google.
The point is the test environment works perfectly right now. If the files are migrated over to the live environment, then we could have issues. But if we simply switch the DNS to the test environment, we know that it will work fine.
I would concede this point if the major updates are operating in a different test environment then the live environment. By environment I mean different server architecture, like different php / asp versions or database types/versions that the current live server can not or will not be updated to. When you create a test environment you generally want to duplicate the live environment so you can simply push the test elements live once complete.If the server architecture is part of the test then I can't argue with the logic.
-
When you switch DNS you are at the mercy of the how fast the DNS propagates through the inter web.
how fast this propagates isn't really an issue for us.
Larger sites that see a lot of traffic daily are likely indexed more frequently and would thus suffer less traffic loss.
I don't understand how we'd lose traffic...some visitors would see old site and some would see new site until fully propagated, right?
If not then why switch DNS if you don't have to?
The point is the test environment works perfectly right now. If the files are migrated over to the live environment, then we could have issues. But if we simply switch the DNS to the test environment, we know that it will work fine.
-
Switching DNS is not an optimal solution in most cases. When you switch DNS you are at the mercy of the how fast the DNS propagates through the inter web. Larger sites that see a lot of traffic daily are likely indexed more frequently and would thus suffer less traffic loss.
If your domain is performing major updates switching the DNS at the same time is even more so ill advised. Would you not want to see how these major updates affect your website first? If you switch the DNS and see a huge traffic loss then you now are left with trying to figure out "did our updates hurt" or "is this just a DNS propagation issue" or combinations thereof?
My advice, take a two tier approach if the ultimate goal is to move DNS.
Step 1: Update Site On Same DNS
Step 2: Update DNS after updates are proven to be valuable to the users.If not then why switch DNS if you don't have to?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google cache from my website give another website
Hello, Some time ago, I already asked a question here because my homepage disappeared from Google for our main keyword. One of the problems that we showing up was the Google cache. If you look to the cache of the website www.conseilfleursdebach.fr, you see that it show the content of www.lesfleursdebach.be. It's both our website, but one is focus on France and the other one on Belgium. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Awww.conseilfleursdebach.fr&oq=cach&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0j69i60j0l2.1374j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Before, there were flags on the page to go to the other country, but in the meantime I removed all links from the .fr to the .be and opposite. This is ongoing since January. Who has an idea of what can cause this and most of all, what do do? Kind regards, Tine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TineDL1 -
AMP pages for a responsive Ecommerce website?
Howdy guys, I'm wondering if AMP is worthwhile intergrating into a responsive e-commerce site? I'm under the impression that the benefits of AMP would be focused around speed, however it may come at the cost of conversion rate if it was to be delivered for product pages, etc. I'm presuming that even if AMP was on every page across a responsive ecommerce site, Google would only display AMP pages in the carousel for news articles, such as on the integrated blog? Any advice would be awesome! Thanks guys 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JAR8970 -
New websites
Hi Moz community, My company updated and used a new developer to build and re-design their charity websites: www.runforcharity.com, www.cycleforcharity.com and www.sportforcharity.com. This sites were "re-launched" at the beggining of December 2015 and I have now been able to get a good 6 weeks worth of data. I've been religiously using Moz.com for a couple of years and I use it simply for SEO purposes. Our websites are built upon organic traffic being driven to them and I have noticed that the PA on the new sites has taken a hammering. They all appear to have a PA of 1 and I'm at a loss why? It appears that no page has h1 text? Would this be an issue with the developer or something the content team is doing wrong? Any help of advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bennerya0 -
Website still not recovered from Panda # 20 (Sep 2012 update)
Hi everyone,My website was hit by Panda around the 27th September 2012 (Panda # 20 or EMD) , since then, it's no longer in Google search results for a particular keyword [wallpapers], resulting in a massive sudden traffic drop (-90%) (see the screenshot below).Despite my best efforts auditing my links, identifying unnatural backlinks, disavowing bad links, enhancing my website content, improving user experience... (I even ended up with a completely revamped website: new design, new structure and new content), I didn't see any improvement! Can you please look at It and Advise me? I am ready to give up; I am in deep despair.What are my competitors doing better than me? Competitor #1 Competitor #2Thank you in advance - I appreciate your timeMy website: http://goo.gl/maaxazLroAvD5.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spinodza0 -
Google indexed wrong pages of my website.
When I google site:www.ayurjeewan.com, after 8 pages, google shows Slider and shop pages. Which I don't want to be indexed. How can I get rid of these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Website having same business and IP address
Hi All, How Google will react with the websites having condition as mentioned below: Two websites, Same owner, same business, same IP, Interlinking with each other ? Two websites, Same owner, same business, different IP, Interlinking with each other ? Also please elaborate best practices(Such as IP address, Physical address, look and feel etc.) if someone wants to run same business through more than one website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RuchiPardal0 -
Is cross-linking websites bad? What is your experience?
Today, I was watching video about Is cross-linking websites bad? on Google Webmaster YouTube channel. I've big confusion on this subject because, I have made big changes on this factor. I have removed my website link from two websites. Both websites are top to link my website. But, I have removed it due to certain issue. I have hyperlink following page with Patio Umbrellas keyword. http://www.vistastores.com/patio-umbrellas I know that, I have to maintain my inbound link statistics and that's why I'm going to add my website link with Patio Umbrellas text link to my clients' websites. I have already added it to certain clients' websites and going to add in another clients' websites. You can review my link in footer. http://www.tikitorchbargains.com/ http://www.firepitbargains.com/ http://www.curtainrodbargains.com/ These websites have similar subject to my website. Now, websites' subject is totally different to my website where I will my text link in footer. After big explanation:: 🙂 I have one big question. Will it help me to out rank well with Patio Umbrellas keyword? Do you have any experience about positive performance or negative performance? Is it advisable or not? If no so why? 🙂 Thanks... watch?v=ufGw65-1je8 6987059809_b6bf3c7335_z.jpg watch?v=ufGw65-1je8 6987059809_b6bf3c7335_z.jpg watch?v=ufGw65-1je8
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Effect of URL change on Website
Hello we are developers and we have just created a new webpage for a client of us. The problem is that we can not replace the old one by the new one, cause our client has developed over 15 satellite pages that calls directly to the code of the old page. If we completly remove the old page we will make those 15 pages go down. Those pages are working over domains specially register for SEO reasons. For example Main page is www.euroair.es Satellite page is www.aireacondicionadodaikin.com Satellite page has pretty good ranking for search term "aire acondicionado daikin" As I told you, we have a new page but we can not make the page work over root domain. So we thought we could make it work over www.euroair.es/es, and make a redirection 301 of homepage and another important inner pages. We chose "/es" folder because it seems like a language folder, but we are not very sure of the effects of pages working on that folder instead of working on root directory. What do you think? Is this matter important or doesn't? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite.com0