hosting (related) sites on the same IP

So I’ve heard from Matt Cutts that if you have too many URLs on the same IP that are all linking to each other you can get penalized for trying to artificially boost your sites rankings (of course he didn’t specify exactly how many sites it takes to set off this penalty, but he did say a few is ok and won’t be penalized).

So based on that I have two questions:

1) if someone runs multiple related businesses, is it OK to have them on the same IP? Hypothetically speaking, say you own a company that sells tires and a company that sells wheels. So you’ve got a domain for each of those, one of which is already ranking very well for its keywords, but they’re on the same IP. Is it ok to link from one to the other, like on the tire store have a link to the wheel store and vice versa? I mean that makes sense, "hey, you bought some wheels! Don’t forget the tires! Link"

2) if someone is running multiple businesses in the same field (oooh, sneaky), like say you own 3 different stores that sell tires, with 3 different domains, is it OK to have those hosted on the same IP? Like say you have joestires.com, bobstires.com, and jimstires.com? Or will Google say "nope, we won’t allow 3 of the same types of websites on the same IP to all rank well?" Obviously you have have multiple sites on the same IP ranking well for totally unrelated keywords, but what about for the same/similar keywords?

j/w

To be safe, I would host the same 3 business types on different C-class IP’s.

However, if you had joestires.com and billswheels.com on the same IP, I don’t think the penalty would be as much or any at all.

Is it possible to have the same 3 business types on the same IP rank well for the same long tail keywords? Yes. For competitive keywords, though, no… I’ve not seen it anyway, nor been able to accomplish it.

When I worked at a local firm, our 3 main customers were the 3 biggest churches in the area.. they all wanted top 5 for this area + youth group(and similar terms).. we had ‘em all on the same box/same IP. Shit was hard.

so we put them on different c-classes and bam, 5 days later.. they were all good to go. Since then, I’ve always done it that way.

LOL at C class IPs

What do you think this is? The 90s?

A Class C IP just related to the third octet of the IP address. It bears absolutely no relation to the AS# or other details you can use to find out whether a site is hosted on the same network or server as another.

I’m pretty sure Google’s web spam team knows about CIDR () so using a different "class C" is just plain stupid. If you must link to your own sites, use different hosting providers, with different domain registrars, different WHOIS, different nameservers, different networks.

lol all you want.. works for me and plenty of others. Just curious, but when’s the last time you ranked top 10 for 2 sites for extremely competitive keywords(1mill+ searches per day) that were hosted on the same box and same IP range?

I’ll be waiting.

I’m not saying host them on the same IP - I’m saying if you’re going for the approach of different IPs use different hosting providers. My point is Google doesn’t care about class C IPs since a class C IP is just the third octet of the IP address and is relatively meaningless in modern networks.

Google can see that AS# on which a site is hosted, it can see the path to the site, it can look at WHOIS information, it can see if the nameservers are the same. So *just* changing the class third octet of the IP is a bit pointless… choose multiple hosting providers and you can have every part of the IP address different from your related sites.

Well, yes you’re right if you want to spend extra money on that.

Would I advise that to a medium sized law firm that makes serious cash? Yes.
Would I advise that to a guy who was having doubts about being able to pay me? No. I’d work around it… by using different c-classes.

The different c-classes method works given that your on-page etc etc is all good to go.

What you said works as well, but it’s not the only way.

Google doesn’t look at JUST one thing and say "oh, ttyl". They realize not everyone is as baller as they are.

What is AS#?

I’ve never had different C-Class IPs… wouldn’t they have different nameservers?

Along a similar route, does Google penalise for having sites on the same IP linked to one another?

We host around 90% of the sites we build on our dedicated server, and include a "Designed by xxxx" in the footer, with the link to our website (hosted on the same server).

I realise that these links won’t have any real weight, but will Google penalise for it?

An AS# is short for autonomous system - basically an internet service provider’s or hosting company’s network. We have multiple IP ranges for instance that amount to the equivalent of a /20. So IP addresses x.x.a.x and x.x.b.x are still on the same network and AS, even though they are different "class C"s.

Google knows this - and thus just changing the third octet of an IP addresses doesn’t really help that much when it comes to them detecting whether two sites are related or whether it is a genuine link. Google uses lots of information to determine whether sites are related these days, so you really want to change as much as possible about your related sites (hosting providers, WHOIS information, etc) if you’re planning on linking your sites together. Not that that is a particularly good SEO strategy for highly competitive terms, but for some very small niches you can get traffic and score highly with half a dozen good quality anchor text backlinks.

It’s remotely possible, but doubtful. It would only happen if too many of your back links as a proportion of your whole is coming from the same place. Google is always getting better at detecting "link rings" and such but I doubt this would flag on their system.

No. Google handles virtual hosts the same way they handle domains with unique IP addresses. From Google, it’s just a myth.

According to Matt Cutts, you can have "a few" sites on the same IP linked to each other without penalty. He didn’t specify how many "a few" is, though.

Obviously the way you’re doing it is completely legit, it’s not like you’re trying to artificially give yourself linkjuice or something.

Cliffs:
- I dunno