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Is this a true statment?
A static IP address will also greatly increase your chances of getting listed at the top of search engines.
No.
[webmasterworld.com...]
If you meant static, then yes a static IP is useful as it means that the search engines always know where to find your site thus avoiding a whole slew of DNS refreshing issues.
If you meant dedicated then it won't really help.
If it were true that a dedicated IP would boost your rank then it would be a fool's economy because there are only a limited number of IPv4 addresses available and so sooner or later they'd simply run out - at which point the engines would have to change their rules to stop benefitting static.
There are two very valid reasons to have a dedicated IP;
1) Once a site reaches a certain size/load it makes commercial sense to run it on a dedicated machine with it's own IP address.
2) You have far more control over a dedicated IP - for instance you know that only your sites will be using it and if you have owned that IP for a while you can be assured that the IP is pretty "safe" in that it hasn't been used by spammers etc.
- Tony