Does Google ban the entire IP or only the spam domain

[reshmi]

Is it true that Google bans the entire IP on which a spam domain is hosted? Thus resulting in the banning of other innocent domains hosted on the same IP as the spam domain.

[tedster]

No, if a shared IP address is the only common factor, other domains are not automatically banned or penalized. But if the domains are interlinked, or show some other relationship such as common backlinks or Whois information, then there can be trouble.

[jdMorgan]

No. That would be ignorant, because some shared hosting companies put 400 sites on one IP address.

Google is not ignorant.

In fact they are smart enough that other spammy sites which appear prominently in the link graph of the banned site have much more to fear than those which share the banned site's IP address.

Jim

[reshmi]

Thanks tedster! Also, though not complete ban, does it affect in any other way for eg, the PR factor.

[tedster]

No. PR is completely dependent on links. No linking relationship means no effect.

[reshmi]

Say, if we are using some software to submit our sites to a search engine (crawler/ directory), and say, the software just goes on bombing the engine' server. Will that cause any harm to the entire IP ?

[reshmi]

Probably a search engine may get angry with a server who is sending on heavy load... and then think of punishing that IP?

[Miamacs]

huh? server-side submitter software?

...

not a bad idea.
we'll write one and offer it to all of our competitors ( for free of course ).

[reshmi]

I believe these softwares exist already. And, many use it too.

[reshmi]

My fear though is that, if people use any such software on a server that my website is running, they may end up ruining my business too!

[reshmi]

"Google's enforcement tactics include denying service to blocks of IP addresses when it cannot track down a specific abuser. The company's notice this month to Comcast users, for example, said it had shut off access to its services because "some person or people" had violated its terms of service agreement"

[news.com.com...]

I got this piece of information posted by Incubator in the searchenginewatch forums

[Miamacs]

look, you've already answered your own questions.

does Google block entire IP ranges ? yeah.
the thresholds as to what frequency/ in what volumes you have to ping them is much higher than what you'd think but none the less...

not sure what their policy is for spamming their submission form, but I sure tripped their limits once or twice just by clicking too fast on SERPs ... heh. really.

it seems to carry risks, with no gains
( submitter software? uh, sure... )

so why do it from your server

if you insist on sumitting stuff to the world's no.1 crawler (...) do it with a client side software from the comfort of your own PC.

get your home/office IP banned instead of your servers'

[reshmi]

I may not do that myself. In case someone else uses it on the server that I am hosted on?

[Miamacs]

...

first, I don't think that any ( often temporary ) ban Google puts on IPs when they query their front end too much would affect the crawling of websites on the same IP.

When the golden era rank checkers that used direct queries to Google's front end got banned ( and couldn't perform searches ) their crawling and rankings were unaffected.

Hence you got 25+ unworkable services for any related search ( for an online ranking checker site ).

Querying Google and spamming...
These are monitored by two completely different services / scripts.

I'd still consider this a problem ( a site in my neighborhood pinging Google extensively for no good reason ) and if I had proof that this IS in fact happening and could not ask either parties to put an end to it, I'd gather up my savings for a $2/month IP address add-on and/or move to a dedicated server.

Simply to avoid the attention of Google.
I'm an SEO btw *smirk*

[edited by: Miamacs at 1:41 pm (utc) on May 31, 2008]

[cabowabo]

From my experience, the only time IP banning occurs is from the browser level, not the domain level.

For example, if you are running a ton of SEO reports and hit Google too often, it will block your IP address or a block of IPs for an amount of time.

However, if your domain is spamming Google with black hat techniques, Google will only penalize your domain, not the IP your domain sits on, as you can change IPs whenever you want.