Google and Shared IP Hosting

[Komodo_Tale]

Over the years I have read numerous threads about the risks associated with shared hosting, multiple domains on the same IP address. What I am curious about is if Google Guy, Matt Cutts, and others from Google (or other search engines for that matter) have weighed-in on this issue and if it is a confirmed, documented concern.

Typically, the touted danger is that if one's domain is hosted on an IP that also hosts a bad neighborhood, the penalties imposed by Google and other search engines may seep across domains and negatively affect your website on the same IP address.

During my own cursory search I did not find anything that indicates this danger truly exists. Is it real? Says who? Or might this be an urban myth or a marketing ploy by dedicated IP hosts companies to sell their more expensive hosting solutions?

I know that opinions abound on this. But, can anyone point to actual documentation or a statement made by a Google or other search engine employee?

Komodo Tale

<Sorry, no extended sigs. See Terms of Service [webmasterworld.com]>

[edited by: tedster at 11:32 pm (utc) on Jan. 10, 2006]

[Lorel]

>Typically, the touted danger is that if one's domain is hosted on an IP that also hosts a bad neighborhood, the penalties imposed by Google and other search engines may seep across domains and negatively affect your website on the same IP address.

Speaking from personal experience:

One client of mine was on shared hosting and another site on the same IP address put up a 302 redirect from one of his pages to another. Being on the same IP this affected my client's site as this link appeared in my client's site search on Google. This was a Google bug that I believe was corrected a year or more ago.

I also found clients having been blacklisted for other sites on the same IP being involved in spam.

I now encourage all my clients to upgrade to a dedicated IP.

[Storyman]

> I also found clients having been blacklisted for other sites on the same IP being involved in spam.

Does this mean if a site has been penalized because of an IP address is shared that by moving to a different IP address the situation will change?

Can it be verified that Google is penalizing a site because of a virtual IP?

[otech]

I have 15 sites on my own server sharing 1 ip and have encountered no problems; however I would not dare interlink those sites in anyway in the hope of achieving any benefit from Google - as this is where you will most likely encounter a penalty.

A lot of hosting companies offering virtual hosting share hundreds of sites on a single IP and those sites are not adversely effected and rank well. Thats because they would not be heavily interlinked as the different site owners would have no real reason to.

It would be quite easy to see if you began interlinking them, and I believe this is the only time you would run into trouble - same goes for websites on different IP's but its most probably to a lesser extent.

IMO anyway..

[suggy]

Our site is on a shared IP and has been for four years. No problems encountered yet. We ride high (top 5 results) for a highly competitive retail category on numerous 20million pages-plus searches. Perhaps we've just been lucky that none of the other tennants have done anything bad?

[Storyman]

suggy, I think otech's point is that it doesn't really matter if it is a virtual host or not. What hurts is if those sites sharing the IP address link to each other because SE's look unkindly on such arrangements. Otech, correct me if I'm wrong.

[au_sammy]

I have about 15 websites on my server on the one IP also. And, 10 of them are all interlinked. They are all PR5/6 pages too.

I don't believe the myth of a penalty for being on the same IP as other 'bad neighbour' websites - as long as your site is not linked to them.

I also don't believe in the penalty of interlinking websites, 10 of mine all link to each other - they are on topic links. They have linked to each other for two years. It is not harming anyone, and all sites are legitimate with written content. And no, no penalty...

[pmkpmk]

I think this is quite common practice: to have a main site and several microsites on the same IP. I think it's also common practice that the microsites link to the mainsite. Mainsite has PR6/5 on all the main pages, microsites have PR4/3 on all relevant pages.

Hey, we even allow our employees to host their sites on our servers...

[otech]

storyman, spot on.

au_sammy, i too link between a few; i dont mean to suggest you cant link between them at all, I am just suggesting there is a threshold (whether it be shared ip's or not) when google counts the number of links between them vs other inbound links from other sources;

ie, if you have a site wide link to every site on your ip on every page, and this is reciprocated on every site, i personally would expect a penalty (especially if you havent got many/any inbound links from sites off the IP).

Just a link here or there shouldnt be of concern, at least thats all I have been game to try after reading peoples posts deducing the reason ALL their sites on their IP have dropped like flies is due to heavy interlinking (regardless of shared IP scenario).

Of course I have also heard they use other things like WHOIS details as hints as to an owner trying to interlink, but I think that might be a little paranoid and overly complex.

Programmatically it would be easy for google to tell if sites sharing an IP engage in heavy interlinking - especially if you look at the way google crawles through sites sharing an IP - ever notice googlebots seem to space their requests to an IP regardless of domain by a second or two - to me this means they definately know all about which sites are on the IP and load balance their crawling to that IP- this information would be easy to use for other means also.

of course, only google would really know ;-)

[Simsi]

I dont think there is any logic to the argument that Google would penalise a site for being on the same server/IP as a "bad" site unless they recip-linked each other maybe. It wouldn't be fair on the "average joe" making an honest living, unaware that his ISP had put him on a server with a spammer or something.

Sure, a dedicated box may be an indication of seriousness, but a "penalty" for not being on one is highly unlikely IMO.

[pmkpmk]

to me this means they definately know all about which sites are on the IP

They should monetize this - I would be happy to have a tool listing all sites on any given IP....

[RonS]

nevermind

[Komodo_Tale]

Here is how to list sites with the same IP address

From Search Engine Roundtable yesterday (SERoundtable.com):

Find Sites on an IP Address with MSN Search

This is one search feature I did not know MSN had until I was pinged by a Syndk8 Forum Member about this thread which has the details (I know the forum is locked down, sorry). Basically, if you do a search in this format at msn search; ip:64.236.116.57 you get a listing of all the sites hosted on that particular server. The information on this search feature is written up at MSN's Web Search Help page.

[pmkpmk]

Great information!

[a1call]

Great info indeed.
I checked one of my sites on a shared hosting. All sites are subdomains of the main site. The point:
You don't need a dedicated server just to have a unique ip address. My host offers shared hosting with unique ip addresses for an extra fee. Thought some might not know.

[alwoodman]

A very interesting article for me, i run <snip> and an offshoot of <snip> is <snip> <snip> which is a street in a town with 100+ shops and restaurants on. The site has long been number one in Google for the town but the other site virtually doesn't exist at all in Google, it has been spidered but the ranking is so poor its hardly worth it being there. After reading this article i think i have found out why. The both sites are hosted on the same IP address and interlink between one another!

Lee

[edited by: engine at 12:10 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2006]
[edit reason] TOS [/edit]

[alwoodman]

Maybe something interesting for you to look at...if you msn search <<snip> which is one of my websites and then google search it...in google the site doesn;t really exist but in msn its ranked number one. the reason why i dont think its ranked in google is because its on the same IP as my other website and the two sites interlink. Maybe MSN doesn't penalise for being on the same IP but google does?

Lee

[edited by: engine at 12:11 pm (utc) on Jan. 12, 2006]
[edit reason] No specific sites, thanks [/edit]