Would a separated IP adress be better?

[Zygoot]

My site is hosted on a shared hosting account. I think that the IP addresses of all sites on that server are the same.

But for a little bit extra money I could get a different IP address on that server.

Would this be better for search engines? Or could the switch to a new IP address hurt my rankings?

[Zygoot]

No one?

[httpwebwitch]

i have heard theories that "link incest" can be harmful. Like, if all your sites are at the same IP and they all just link to each other, they just get ignored.

In such situations, having sites on a different class C IPs may benefit.

but that is just a theory; I can't offer any proof or experimental data to back it up. but there are folks doing that sort of thing as a precautionary strategy.