Dedicated IP or Virtual?

Will the type of IP make a difference?

[knotty]

I can't find where I saw the article but it claimed a dedicated or static IP address webhost is much better for search engine indexing and placement than the "virtual" IP host.

I was wondering about this because when I first put up a website about 2 years ago, it was on static IP and it got indexed really well.

Since changing to a virtual host about a year ago, the same site, placement is nowhere as good.

Just wondering, Thanks!
knotty

[jeremy goodrich]

It's been a cause of endless debate, one of the best reasons for going on a static IP is that some engines have been known to black list IP's that are a source of abuse in the past.

So, you don't share risk if you have ad dedicated IP address. Also if you have a dedicated IP, there is less risk of a hosting company messing up their configuration files & returning another website when a request is made for *your* website.

There are other issues, but since the hosting mess up has happened to me in the past, I tend to prefer dedicated IP's for sites, though I have sites on shared IP addresses that perform equally well (if not better) in search results for various engines.

[knotty]

I sure wish I knew why my first site couple years ago placed so well on the search engines. As far as I can see nothing different or unusual. Few keywords in the meta, description, title and 4 webpages with little text.

In six months, it was #5 on AltaVista, 7 on Hotbot all with free submission. Google wasn't even around. Now with basically the same site, it's about 200+ down. Even with paid inclusion.

The only thing I had different was a host with static IP. I'm wondering if the search engines changed or what.

Thanks for the reply, I have to keep plugging on wondering again. Ha!

knotty

[EliteWeb]

It depends on your host, when you run all the sites on a IP address and you know you arnt doing any tricky stuff you can have as many as you want. Its when you have to worry if someone else is doing something tricky who is on your ip address.

[jim_w]

jeremy:

As the world runs out of IP numbers, I think those search engines will have to change their ways, at least until the new IP scheme is adopted. The only problem I have seen is it appears to take dynamic IPs a bit longer to start to send information because they are sharing or reckoning the stuff out.

[Marcia]

knotty, that wouldn't be making the difference for the drop. Search engine algorithms and scoring criteria change over time.