Will an IP Change affect our ranking?

[annamuzika]

We will be changing the IP addresses of one of our sites who is now ranking in google and yahoo but I would just like to know if this will affect our ranking in google or will alter our page rank at all?

[uncle_bob]

Changing the ip of a site should not change your ranking at all. I've change the ip of many of my sites with no change to ranking at all.

The only exception might be if you move to (or from) a shared host that runs lots of spammy sites, but I doubt google are going to share the exact details of their ranking algorithm any time soon.

[The Contractor]

Your rankings can also change because of the location/country of the IP address.

[stapel]

annamuzika said:

I would just like to know if [getting a new IP address] will affect our ranking...or...alter our page rank at all?

I've moved a few times, and have never had a problem. The search-engine spiders are following links from one page to another, guaging your "worth". They don't look at the underlying IP address, other than to figure out where to go, as far as I know.

uncle_bob said:

Changing the ip of a site should not change your ranking at all....The only exception might be if you move to (or from) a shared host that runs lots of spammy sites

Do the search engines ban according to IP, or according to actual duplicate content and other explicitly bad behavior?

The Contractor said:

Your rankings can also change because of the location/country of the IP address.

Would this be due, perhaps, to the country-directed listings of the search engines? For instance, if I were searching in, say, France, would sites with French IP's be bumped up in the rankings, while sites with, say, Australian IP's would be bumped down? Is this an IP thing, or a language thing? Or maybe some of both?

Thank you.

Eliz.

[The Contractor]

Would this be due, perhaps, to the country-directed listings of the search engines? For instance, if I were searching in, say, France, would sites with French IP's be bumped up in the rankings, while sites with, say, Australian IP's would be bumped down? Is this an IP thing, or a language thing? Or maybe some of both?

Yes, it matters in country specific Google searches. Say for instance your business is located in Canada and you only ship to Canadians. If I was a Canadian resident and used google.ca to search for your business, products or services with the radio button of pages from Canada checked - your website better be hosted in Canada with a Canadian datacenter/IP or you will not show up in the results. Same for Google.dk and other country specific Google domains.