Link Building and IP addresses

[sophoclesthesock]

I'm working with a company that currently has between 200-250 clients, all with websites on the same IP address.
This is a hyperbolic hypothetical situation, but theoretically -
Google is fully cognizant of the fact that all of these are on the exact same IP address, so getting one site to link to all of them (NOT spammy directories, real sites) would probably result in getting these sites banned or at the very least penalized, right?

Thanks!

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, sophocles.

There is a third possibility in addition to a full ban or a penalty. Google can just ignore those links - zero them out as if they were all rel="nofollow". In fact, there's a lot of that in the SERPs these days.

[sophoclesthesock]

Great - thanks Tedster! Excited to come on board.

[tedster]

I think the bottom line for the situation you outlined in your first post is that it is not a very effective way to build solid rankings.

If there happen to be some sites in that portfolio where visitors to one would find value in another, then link naturally. But any kind of templated patterned cross-linking is pretty much not going to work out well (even if they are all on dedicated IP addresses, by the way.)

[dstiles]

I have several sites on a short range of IPs, many on the same IP, all on the same server. I have links from my company site to them all and some of them link to each other. Never had a problem yet, though whether google treats the links or just ignores them, who knows?

I do know that almost as soon as I upload a new site and update my online list, the SEs come buzzing around.

I link for my customers' and their customers' convenience, not for google's. Which is what they told us to do, isn't it? Build sites for customers? Or was that last week's latest advice?

[deadsea]

We often get reports here from a webmaster that has all their sites kicked out of the Google index at one time. Google certainly looks at many sites in the same bucket.

I'd imagine its not just hosting IP address that Google looks at though. I'd imagine also:
* Site template
* Google webmaster tools ownership/verification
* Google analytics account
* Google Adsense account
* Site link profile