Name servers

A question for the SEOs out there

[altyfc]

Is there any truth in the statement that, all other things being equal, Google would tend to favour two interlinking sites with different nameservers than two with the same...? Someone told me yesterday that this is a factor but I've never heard this before...

Aaron

[Yidaki]

Yes and no. You will find a lot of discussions about dedicated vs. virtual hosting [google.com]. Allthough it might be more "safe" to use two different, dedicated ip adresses to cheat it's perfectly "safe" to crosslink sites sharing the same ip / virtual hosting as long as you don't do it to cheat.

I run a group of related websites sharing the same ip since years. Some of them are interlinked. No problem at all but i don't artificially link them, don't "overlink" them, have enough external inbound links, etc...

[ogletree]

That has never been proved. A lot of people here are too superstitious to do that and probably have little shrines on top of their web servers to ward away evil spirits. There are too many sites that even share IP's at the top of very competitive keywords for me to ever believe that same name servers or same IP's will hurt you. Work on the known SEO stuff before you start warring about that. It takes several months sometimes but you will get there if you follow the information that is here at WW. Here is a good Thread [webmasterworld.com].

I agree with Yidaki. Google will not find problems like that but your competitor will turn you in. As long as what you are doing is helpful to users and you are not being tricky then you should be fine. Make good sites that help people and inform.

[Arnett]

I heard that Google penalized multiple domains from the same server and used deepbot to track the ips. Deepbot is on a permanent vacation and ip tracking is offline.

Google would tend to object if you had 10 widget domains on the same server in order to try and take the top 10 for widget searches. I have multiple domains on the same server but they all target different business interests. If that's a crime,then sue me.

[Yidaki]

> heard that Google penalized multiple domains from the same server
>and used deepbot to track the ips. Deepbot is on a permanent vacation
>and ip tracking is offline

Wild guesses or do you have sources!?

Arnett, with your last post you gave yourself the perfect answer to your own question: it's obviously not a problem with virtual hosting. Look for other things you might have changed or done wrong at your pages ...

[ogletree]

I have seen law firms that are going after several different keywords. They are very high on all of them. They are all on the same IP. None of them have more than a PR5.

[Yidaki]

>They are all on the same IP. None of them have more than a PR5.

I have some pr 7 - all virtual hosts - same ip. So what? No proof! :P

[claus]

This rumor might be an offspring from a few threads on a new patent Google got in February. I started a thread explaining it in common words here, it turned out to become quite long as this was difficult matter after all:

"Google's 2 rankings & you"
[webmasterworld.com...]

The essence of it all is that there are two instances of ranking, first the basic ranking of pages, and then a re-ranking of the pages that have already been ranked one time. In the re-ranking more emphasis is put on pages linking from outside the domain of the ranked page, and outside "the neigborhood" of this page. As i recall, the patent never was so explicit as to mention IP-addresses or name-servers as being "neighborhood" factors.

>> Do shared nameservers have effect?

If this re-ranking patent do take nameservers into account as defining "neigborhood" and if this patent is employed, then there will be greater weight on links from non-nameserver-sharing sites.

Please note the two ifs, and don't panic ;) Your total amount of links will still be considered for the initial ranking - it's just the re-ranking that is different.

Status:
Nobody outside Google knows if this patent is used today or not. There has been a few signs, but then again a lot of changes have taken place recently, so there's no clear evidence.

/claus

[ogletree]

Yidaki I was not saying that the PR5 was because of the the same ip issue. I was pointing out how well they were doing with only a PR5. If somebody says they are number one in their serps it does not matter what their PR is they won.