Virtual hosting vs unique IP's

[SEO practioner]

Google Guy, if you see this, I would like to get your opinion, from the "Google man" himself... :-)

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I know this subject has been covered many times in WW before, but I just can't seem to find the real, true and unique answer to this eternal question. What makes it worse is, depending to whom you talk too, you may end up with more than one opinion, and often very contradictory ones at that!

Ever since I started doing optimization, I have always wondered if shared (virtual hosting) is the way to go.

Say you have two independent sites not related to each other, but are in the same industry, so the content on one site can really help viewers on the other site and vice-versa. Additionally, one of the sites has an "industry news" section that is read a lot. Both have great content and are well written.

Site A links to site B and site B links to site A, but all on the same virtual IP address.

My question is: Could they both benefit if hosted on 2 different IP's? I would really like to get that question out of my head once and for all.... :-)

I know that PR isn't everything and great content is actually better rewarded from Google, but if our clients can effectively have their sites ranking better on unique IP's, I will thus recommend to them they switch IP's.

Understandably, I just want to be 100% certain before doing anything or telling them anything until I am perfectly sure of what the whole theory is.

Thanks a lot for any info on this important question / subject.

SEO :-)

[ggrot]

If there are two related sites on the same virtual ip address linking to each other, it seems almost obvious to me that they are owned by the same person.

A single virtual ip usually doesnt handle more than 100 or so sites (depending on the provider). Given the number of sites online, the odds that you will happen to pick the same provider/server as your source links and not be the same owner is slim to none. I think there is a good chance that the PR might be discounted in some way, either directly, or by giveing those two sites a higher chance of being a link farm, or whatever.

On the other hand, using a virtual ip by itself is no problem for google. I have plenty of well ranked sites on virtual ips. Of course, I run the server so there isn't spam on any of those sites, but thats a different story altogether.

[rfgdxm1]

Crosslinking 2 domains should not be a worry. People do this all the time, and I'd hardly call 2 domains a link farm.

[rfgdxm1]

>A single virtual ip usually doesnt handle more than 100 or so sites (depending on the provider). Given the number of sites online, the odds that you will happen to pick the same provider/server as your source links and not be the same owner is slim to none.

Bzzzzzzzzzt. Wrong. People recommend their host to friends all the time, and friends often link to each other. In the real world this happens not infrequently.

[sullen]

I was searching for information on this very topic yesterday and found this thread [webmasterworld.com].

Essentially says that like themed sites that link to each other on the same IP will not be penalised, but watch out for duplicate content (and fair enough - as rdf... says, it must be quite common).

Not to mention that getting additional IPs out of some hosts is like getting blood out of a stone...

[bedelman]

As to the question of how many IP addresses can share a single web host -- many, often many more than 100! Check out my article & empirical study on this subject:

Web Sites Sharing IP Addresses: Prevalence and Significance
[cyber.law.harvard.edu...]

Ben Edelman
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
[cyber.law.harvard.edu...]