My host has a few options for hosting. One of them, which costs more, has a dedicated ip address for my website. Is there any benefit from a search engine optimization standpoint of paying extra for a dedicated ip address?
Michael Cyger
[ Admin ]
Here’s my 2 cents.
I’ve generally thought that having a unique IP address for your website would provide a) differentiation from the multitudes of websites hosted under one IP address, and b) would protect you from having an IP address banned from Google based on other user’s actions (similar to spamming from an IP address). This is the general understanding by SEOers, I’d say.
However, recently I ran across an interview with Google Director of Technology, Craig Silverstein, from Jun 2002. Here’s what he said at Slashdot:
5) Google and IP address.
by Anonymous Coward
Why in this day and age does google continue to penalize sites that are virtual hosted? With ip addresses becoming harder to get/justify every day why does google discount the relevance of links that don’t come from a unique ip address. Please don’t just deny it, I think the Internet community deserves an explanation.
Craig:
I can’t just deny it? What are my other choices? [:)] Actually, Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you’ll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception—thanks for giving me the chance to dispel a myth!
So, the lesson learned is to ask your host (either now or before you sign up) for an explanation of how they set up virtual hosting so that each domain has unique IP addresses. Point them to this URL and question #5.
