Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Don't go with virtual hosting - go with a stand alone IP.
Can any of you explain to me what this means? Right now I pay 7 bucks a month for shared hosting, however my website is profitable, and growing. I plan to pay $20/month for virtual hosting, but this statement scares me. I am not really big enough to go for dedicated hosting yet. I only receive 500 uniques a day, but I am constantly growing making new pages, and I get on Google with no problem anymore. Protecting my site is now essential. Finding a great reliable host (not too expensive yet) is also essential. So what does this statement mean and why is it important?
So the question I want answered is:
Does going with a stand alone IP mean to purchase a Dedicated Server Space? How would this be a benefit for the search engines, and how would it protect me? Do you guys recommend me going with this "stand alone IP"?
I would say for a low budget - long term in mind website it's probably a good place to start (shared) but once you get a good build up of content and start getting 'well into the game' then you eventually should look at other options.
Ok so how do I know if I'm not getting dupped when Im getting an IP.
Used to be only internic but now there are others.
Are there lots of em or only a few of em?
Wheres the best places to get an ip?
When i get one how do I associate it with my host?
I mean if I go to internic now my domain is already taken (by my host or me and my host)?
While a dedicated IP on a trusted host logically seems best, a shared IP on a very trusted, huge host would seem very likely to be viewed more favorably than a dedicated one with a fly by night company.
I can see no compelling arguement, just another unsupported theory. Most of the top alexa 1500 are .com domains.... that statement has equal merit and logic.
If I was google I would lower the ranking of stand alone ip's. They must have money and be serious about their internet presence, so they should pay for adwords..... now that does have logic :)
Do Search Engines Ban Shared IP Users?
Recent rumors suggested that search engines have blocked spam activity, by blocking ip addresses. Since shared IP address users are bundled together on the same IP address with many others, innocent sites would be banned from search engines if this were the case. The rumor, however, is false. Most web hosting services use an IP sharing environment and it would be unprofitable to search engines to penalize a site based on IP.Using modern name-based technology a search engine is able to ban anything on a domain name instead of an entire IP neighborhood. So it continues to be search engine safe to host a site on a shared IP environment. (However, sharing a mail server with a spammer is still a bad idea. If you are concerned about being penalized for a fellow shared user’s activity, get your own mail server.)
To sum up- serious webmasters who would like total control over their server and space, and e-commerce web sites who need their own SSL certificates are the best candidates for dedicated IP addresses. The rest of us can just happily coexist on the cheaper shared IP’s.
[quote]thankx for the url but I need silver menbership to see the other 991 domains I'm sharing with.[/quote]
Try this one:
http://whois.webhosting.info/[enter some IP address]
Only one I could find for free.
GuinnessGuy
About 3% of all web sites "own" a private IP number, with the remainder being on virtual, or name-based, servers. Although only 3% are dedicated IP's, we have seen that in many instances well over 90% of the top-50 results in the search engines are sites having dedicated IP numbers. This was so strange that we have repeatedly validated these findings, and have found that switching a site from a virtual IP to a dedicated IP number alone has caused significant ranking increases. Of course, the web is so dynamic that this could be coincidence, but we do not think so.Likewise, we have found that there are "dirty" IP c-blocks, ranges of IP numbers that have been tarnished by spammers and left to be reassigned to unsuspecting sites. If your site is in the range of the spammers IP, then you are equally penalized. We have likewise found instances where simply moving a site has caused the ranking to improve.
All things being equal - $50-100 per year for a dedicated ip is cheap insurance.
I now understand what google means by 'watch out for bad neighborhoods'
I notice my IP was banned by spamhause in 2001 and then reinstated so now it is 'clear'.
Likewise, we have found that there are "dirty" IP c-blocks, ranges of IP numbers that have been tarnished by spammers and left to be reassigned to unsuspecting sites. If your site is in the range of the spammers IP, then you are equally penalized.
Oh boy! Does this mean that the new unique IP we have been assigned to might be tarnished? Could we now be worse off? How can you tell if your newly assigned IP address is tainted? Am I being paranoid here?
GuinnessGuy
1) If another site on your ip appears in the same set of results then google may choose only one from that ip.
2) Server response time. Spiders may like fast servers and visit more often.
3) Links from the same ip from one site to another may be ignored.
4)Links from foreign ip's may count less on local searches.
Oh boy! Does this mean that the new unique IP we have been assigned to might be tarnished? Could we now be worse off? How can you tell if your newly assigned IP address is tainted? Am I being paranoid here?
I agree Brett - cheap insurance
I would definitly 'look over' any newly - assigned IP espec if Im sinking some serious hours and $'s into it.
I havent noticed any difference in ranking with the websites i've made for others using shared IP's and my 2 sites that I host myself so i dont think that google considers shared IP's to be a major issue for their algos, however it certainly cant hurt to have a dedicated IP Address in case they do take it in to account along with other things - or in case they plan to in the future.
One small issue I have had with one of the sites hosted on a shared IP (with a certain company that are good for domain registrations but not for hosting) is that it is blocked from a lot of users attempting to access it from work, several corporations have the IP blocked in their web filters.
In fact many users using a certain program that claims to block "copyright enforement corporations" (name begins with peer...) are unable to access websites on that IP Address as well, and after checking their logs have confirmed that the program is logging the IP Address as being a blocked one and blocking the attempt to access it.
Further payments to that web host have of course been stopped and just waiting to use up whats already been payed for before moving the site to a different host. But it does demonstrate the potential risks of using a shared IP.
As for the fact that many high ranking sites have dedicated IPs, it's silly to assume the dedicated IP CAUSES the rankings.
Sites with high rankings often:
-Receive LOTS of traffic
-Have "career" webmasters
These sorts of sites will tend to have dedicated IPs, that's all.
The vast majority of sites on the Net use shared hosting. I find it very hard to believe there would be a penalty for this.
In fact, perhaps Google could use the dedicated IP against you: if you're on a dedicated IP, there's increased chance you're an advanced SEO.
Spend your $50/year on two directory links instead.
don't link to them and certainly don't share an IP with them either.
An unjustified IP is a dedicated IP without the secure certificate. Would that be good enough?
An unjustified IP is a dedicated IP without the secure certificate. Would that be good enough?
I didn't even know dedicated or shared IP's existed or were even an issue. A dedicated IP is just one IP address that your website will be hosted on, no one else shares. My take on this is, that shared IP's can use a free shared SSL certificate (if the hosting provides it), but can't use certificates you purchase yourself, however if you have a dedicated IP address, you can purchase an SSL certificate yourself (yearly fee) and install it. Logically, the disadvantage of shared SSL certificates is that if your site grows, where you need more bandwidth and space, you can't stick with a shared ip, forcing you to buy SSL certificate anyway. With buying your own SSL certificate, you are not restricted to shared ip hosting, and if something happens to your host, or if your site magically gains 10,000 visitors a day, you can simply go for dedicated without much of a hassle.
Its apparent that if you want to start an ecommerce store, or if your website is growing, a dedicated IP is the smart thing to get. I honestly did not even think about this when I first purchased my hosting, as I knew nothing about search engines. I didn't realize until after I had layout online, that I had to do something in order to rank on the search engines. I figured that I would just rank automatically since "I had a really really good site!".
To be honest with you, it took me about 9 months to rank period, in Google, but even with my good rankings, I am still on a shared IP. I actually am starting to rank better on Google than Yahoo and MSN now (the tables have turned). It would be interesting to see how my rankings will stand with a dedicated IP, which I have decided to get now, due to my sites growth and ranking capabilities.
For example, my site now produces enough income to justify the use of VPS. I do not have the volume (yet) to justify a dedicated server. I will have to swithch hosts to make this move, but my guess is that there will be significant amount of testing after subscribing to the VPS (in other words the site remains with its present host while I set up the new host and test).
When the new site is ready, all I have to do is point everything to the new domain name servers. Honestly, I figure the switch will take place over about two weeks time (I do this web host thingy part time). The last thing I want to do is take my site offline for a couple of days.
I have just moved my site to a new server using dedicated i.p. and honestly, there is a whole tons of work to be done. And everything is messed up. Emails, Statistics, Database and others. So my word to those who want to change server, please contact your webhost or get more information before moving your server.
What service are you getting your hosting from? Maybe it is unmanaged, and that is why you are having problems. I made the mistake of buying an unmanaged vps from a provider, and it was a useless account for me basically (they did not advertise correctly, said nothing about unmanaged). The control panel was Webmin, not Cpanel, which made it even harder to learn (again, not advertised). Even though the price was good, it wasn't worth the time and effort to learn, so I am getting my money back, and going to try another VPS company. Search for "managed" vps companies that offer Cpanel, or a control panel you like. Servint, Powervps, and Liquidweb offer managed VPS's, with CPanel, Plesk, and/or Webmin, and I have read nothing but great reviews about these three companies.
