Hello,

Dear friends, I just would like to get your opinion regarding whether the chances of higher ranking in search engines relate to having a dedicated IP address or no...

Here's my opinion....

A growing number of web hosting firms set up multiple domains on the same IP address -- as you know this is known as shared or virtual hosting. It may have a extremely deleterious effect on your site's search engine placement.

There are a few reasons this is bad:

- The main reason that concerns us is the chance of having your site blocked by a search engine. The reason is simple. If you are sharing an IP number with 30 to 50 other web sites, you are trusting them not to over submit or spam the search engine. If a search engines blocks an IP number all the sites that are sharing that IP number are blocked. If you have your own unique IP number, you do not have this problem.

One incredulous bit of information is that when you discover shared hosting and bring it to the attention of the hosting firm, they will claim that is has nothing to do with search engine placement. They will usually say that they have lots of sites with top placement. Keep in mind that the hosting firms (All of us here ) are saving money by using shared or virtual hosting.

Lets at least be honest with ourselfs...

So now tell me what you all think of this ?

It doesn't matter...

And, the IP banning usually happens when several vhosts sharing the IP are acting as gateway pages for one of the sites.

I believe it does, since I've tried it myself. and most of the web hosting experts they know.

Even I've visited couple of well known web hosting companies and they mentioned they are providing dedicate ip with all of their accounts for being listed in search engines with high ranking.

HeadMaster, I agree with you

:) samehere:stickout :o ;) :D :) :cool: :rolleyes:

It makes no difference: whether an IP is shared is not part of any search engine's ranking algorithm -- and there'd be no logical reason for it to be. It would clearly have to bearing on the relevance of the site in question for any search term, and that's what matters to the search engines.

Most of the bad rep for shared IPs on search engines comes from a small number of isolated incidents some time ago, in which an anti-spam response from search engines might include removal of all sites using a particular IP... but current practice is to take such action by domain name, not by IP.

The response these days, too, is sophisticated enough to go the step of researching linked sites and their location and ownership. Sometimes the result of these things might make it appear that action was taken against everyone on an IP, but it's really the fact that all or several of the sites using that IP were, for example, part of a closed circle or link farm.

Hi all-

We have had a good discussion on this before....actually a few times.

Here is a good thread on it. Be sure to read the entire thread.

http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42328

-Lamar

using a dedicated IP will not give you a better ranking

I think that giving out a dedicated IP for each domain is not a valid reason as per ARIN guidelines. Remember there is a "shortage" of IP's currently. I think if search engines factored in whether or not the domain's IP was used by another domain, for any reason, it would cause a large number of problems for the search engines. Perhaps when IPv6 is fully deployed it will be a different story but only then can we tell but I don't think ARIN will be accepting a list of domains that need a dedicated IP so that they can be ranked higher in the search engines...

It does not have an effect,it would be supid of search engines to block by IP, if you block an SE Spammers IP then they just move to another - If you block their domain, it doesn't make things so easy as they have lost an integral part of their brand.

Originally posted by NovaW
using a dedicated IP will not give you a better ranking

correct, but it gives you peice of mind from people spamming the search engines.

Mike

Originally posted by ADEhost


correct, but it gives you peice of mind from people spamming the search engines.

Mike

Not really, search engines block by domain as it is more effective, domains cost money to register and propegate, so it makes more sense, blocking by IP just isn't as effective.

I think it was on SitePoint that someone posted correspondance with AltaVista who said they blocked by domain and not by IP. As far as I am aware the same goes for all the major search engines.

The only time I'd say you should worry about shared IPs is if you are doing something that might be seen as "gray area" by search engines -- crosslinked minisites, gateway domains, etc. It wouldn't be a good idea to put more than one of those on a single IP, only because it might make it easier to catch what you are doing. Even at that, the entire IP wouldn't be penalized; just those specific domains.

For "normal use" if a dedicated IP gives you peace of mind it's peace of mind against a fear that is groundless to begin with.

But, it didn't used to be this way. Karl mentioned AltaVista saying they don't ban IPs, but they at one time were known to do so. That was 1999, though; a lot has changed since then but the fact that it was done three years ago is probably the source of a lot of the fear of it that's still around today.

Yes, it used to be common practice to do so, as you mentioned, but in 1999 using name based hosting wasn't as popular is it is now and nearly all sites had their own IP - a lot has changed since then, and the search engines have recognised this and changed accordingly.

no it doesn't matter. And even if it did, the search engines would have to change that policy to maintain themselves as relevant. Seeing as the industry is moving to shared IP's the google's of this world would start to show poor results if they were at odds with the world as far as results were concerned.

My 2c

Greg Moore