Christchurch, Earthquakes and Search Engines

If any business has been disrupted by the earthquake, please email our accounts team & explain circumstances & request a hosting credit. It is really a bad idea to let your web hosting lapse, as it effects your search ranking. Stay online with a message regarding temporary closure.

Search engines don't like seeing websites go offline. If your website goes offline for non payment or any other reason, it can negatively effect your search engine ranking. The more it happens, or the longer it happens, then google will remove you from the search results compleletely, and you will not quickly regain the same position you once held. So for this reason it is better to have a message like: "our doors are currently closed due to the earthquake but please come back soon, we will be back". But in the meantime, google continues to scan your website and rank you for all your keyphrases.

We want to be there to support our customers long term. We understand what a struggle it will be for businesses to locate new premises, and how tight cashflow might get. We are therefore happy to forego those hosting fees of businesses who need this small help.

FYI, Web Widgets also donated $5000 to the red cross who have done such a wonderful job of looking after everyone through this crisis. So terrible to see all that devastation, and thought that was the best way we could help.

We would also love to provide free websites to anyone wanting to mobilise/coordinate charitable services etc in response to the earthquake. If you have an idea, please go ahead with your free trial and then submit a request for the free hosting status. Note that domain names still need to be purchased.