IP issues with link building

[harold]

I guess it is generally known that Google looks at IP's when considering a website's incoming links. Several links from different websites hosted on the same IP could result in a penalty, at least that is what I read in many articles.

My question now is which part of the IP Google looks at when it comes to this.

An example, consider this an IP:

aaa.bbb.cc.dd

Would it be bad if the part aaa.bbb.cc is the same for 10 incoming links but the dd part is differen each time?

And how about the situation in which aaa.bbb is the same but there is siginifcant variation in the cc.dd part?

Are there general rules for this? Or do we just need to guess?

[Peter Willis]

It depends more "how" the link is placed really. If you have a list of your own network of sites, and clearly state this, you wouldn't get a penalty just becauase your sites are all hosted on the same box.

If, however, you were trying to decieve and had lots of irrelevant links and they happened to all come from the same source - this is a clear signal that you are aiming to manipulate the Google rankings, and therefore COULD result in a penalty.

[baggsy]

An example, consider this an IP:

aaa.bbb.cc.dd

Would it be bad if the part aaa.bbb.cc is the same for 10 incoming links but the dd part is different each time?

In your example, cc is the 'c class' of an IP. In an ideal world (from a link-building perspective) you'd want all of your domains to sit on separate C-class IP blocks. In the real world though, lot's of small hosts only have one or two C class IP blocks, so all domains get lumped in there together.

I'm by no means an expert on this, but that's my understanding.

If I can also say, that if you are linking correctly, then this should not really be an issue. If you are going to be interlinking between 10 sites on the same C block - and from every page within those sites - then you'll get pinged. If you tactically link to relevant content on sites within the same block every now and again, you'll be fine.

[megan isla]

That is a widespread SEO myth. Google employees have denounced it on numerous occasions.

What Google has admitted to looking at is your linking profile. In many spammy situations we may be talking about two of one and a couple of another; but for most Webmasters the IP address profile of backlinks is not an issue.

There is no way to know precisely when and how Google will look at your backlink profile, but if you can judge at a glance that it covers almost as many domains as backlinks, you're probably okay without having to fuss over who is using which IP addresses.

[Peter Willis]

Google denouncing something and Google practicing something are two very different scenario's, Megan.

[casinojack]

Matt Cutts from google has chatted about this. He used a number of 5 sites same Ip as a for instance, but never said at what point it would hurt you.

Realize a lot of sites have shared hosting. but if they all pointed to each other and you had like 100 sites I think would hurt.


To clarify the c block thing, so you get it better look at this way:

201.222.121.34

The bold part, forst three numbers (or octets) is a STREET , and the last number 34, is a HOUSE

Class C means that

class b would be like this

201.222.121.34

And so on and so forth....This is not 100% technically correct but should help you visualize it better...BTW, only valid number are 1 - 254, so a class c network has 254 computers on it, that it all...