Similar sites on the same server

will it be a problem?

[iam david lee]

Hi

I host 3 sites which have similar content but all 3 of them are different sites. I heard that having them on the same server might not be good with search engines.

Is that really a problem, do i need to host these site on different servers or can i just use different IP addresses with different DNS.

Would appreciate the help...

Thanks

David

[Marcia]

There are differing opinions around on that, David. If going with different IP numbers it could also be a matter of them not being in the same c-class.

Will they be linking to each other, or have other links in common with each other?

[iam david lee]

Hi

thanks for the reply.

The sites will not be linked to each other. I prefer to put them on the same server as it would be cheaper and easier. What is c-class?

thanks
david

[shady]

c-class is the first 3 parts of the ip address:

If ip address is 123.456.789.012 the c-class is 123.456.789

[iam david lee]

Probably if i buy the IP addresses from my host it will be c-class ip addresses.

Links coming into the sites will be similar as the sites category/content is similar.

would appreciate any comments...

thanks

[wanderingmind]

Dangerous territory, from my experience.

I know for a fact that if the topics are even somewhat similar and interlink, only one of them would show up for keyphrases. Others would be pushed too far down to be noticed.

Keep them on separate servers or C classes or whatever, and you can even interlink, from what Ive seen.

[stuartc1]

Personal experience has proven that this is not a problem. But I guess with everything there are limits on how similair they are.

My experience with 3 similiar sites (all on the same topic but each having a different area of the topic) has shown no problems whatsoever. They all sit on the same server and did share the same IP for about a year, they now have c-class IP's and never any problems.

So I guess if the sites are almost identical google with thinks 'what's the use in showing all of these if they are almost the same from the same server (and IP)'.

If they ARE almost the same, then either drop the duplicates or move to seperate servers... that's my opinion. If they only share some similiar elements then I do not see a problem.

[UPDATE: spelling corrections]