Is there a penalty for linking to sites that are all hosted on the same IP address?
-
Hi...
We're doing some reciprocal link building and a gentleman has been kind enough to offer me sever additional links for the exchange. All of them (5) are on the same IP address as one of his links to which we have already linked. They are in a related field of endeavor, legal websites. If I make the swap with him, is Google going to disregard, penalize or otherwise marginalize my efforts?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for hte clarification, Theo...
Now , about this "first make sure these extra links will actually help rather than hurt you"... I'm not the sharpest tack just yet... how would you ensure that links like this would have a beneficial or detrimental effect? Is there a tool or method about which I am unaware?
Thanks!
-
I don't think they are incestuously linked (as in cross-linked...) They have good metrics. The webmaster does actively solicit links, but he pulls from a variety of themes and topics, so the legal sites in question may be on the same IP as sites about art, etc. Some of the links they have on their sites may link out to relevant blogs they have created.
When Matt Cutts directly addresses this (same IP addresses) he says "no problem":
-
That devaluation would be based on the fact that you've already received links coming from that IP (and therefor the added links will matter less than if they were links from different IPs).
Do note the reply by EGOL. Before agreeing to this 'bonus deal', first make sure these extra links will actually help rather than hurt you!
-
Thanks Theo.
When you say "because they attach greater values to links coming from different IPs than from the same IP" is that "value" as perceived by Google? The sites in question all have very good metrics in the MozBar, but are you saying that they may look good on their own but as links they will somehow be "devalued" by the search engines?
-
I would be careful. Are these sites trading links with other websites that are heavily involved in manipulative linking? Are these sites incestuously linked to one another?
The best way to get in trouble is to link to trashy websites that are manipulating.
-
Disregard: no
Penalize: no
Otherwise marginalize: yes (because they attach greater values to links coming from different IPs than from the same IP)
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Massive Influx of Total Links - But External Links are Dropping?
Hey Moz Community, I was checking out the Links on one of my client's sites, as they were hit with spammy external links about a year ago, and noticed a large influx of Total Links to the site. According to Moz, external links have actually dropped over the last few months, so I can only assume they are internal links. But, I don't see how my client could add so many internal links over the past 5 months, as they don't do much besides upload new products (they're an ecommerce clothing retailer) via Shopify. They haven't added much over the past half year either. Total links were about 130K in Oct 2019; today, the site has almost 1 million. I've attached some screenshots for reference via Moz to better illustrate the issue. Appreciate any insights into this. Thank you in advance! hhCCUsk lyGltZD
Technical SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Does my "spam" site affect my other sites on the same IP?
I have a link directory called Liberty Resource Directory. It's the main site on my dedicated IP, all my other sites are Addon domains on top of it. While exploring the new MOZ spam ranking I saw that LRD (Liberty Resource Directory) has a spam score of 9/17 and that Google penalizes 71% of sites with a similar score. Fair enough, thin content, bunch of follow links (there's over 2,000 links by now), no problem. That site isn't for Google, it's for me. Question, does that site (and linking to my own sites on it) negatively affect my other sites on the same IP? If so, by how much? Does a simple noindex fix that potential issues? Bonus: How does one go about going through hundreds of pages with thousands of links, built with raw, plain text HTML to change things to nofollow? =/
Technical SEO | | eglove0 -
Confused on footer links (Which are best practices for footer links on other websites?)
Hello folks, We are eCommerce web design and Development Company and we give do follow links of our website to every projects which we have done with specific keywords. So now the concern is we are seeing huge amount of back-links are being generated from single root domain for particular keyword in webmaster tools. So what should be the best way to practice this? Should we give no follow attribute to it or can use our company logo with link? LtMjHER.png
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
How to create site map for large site (ecommerce type) that has 1000's if not 100,000 of pages.
I know this is kind of a newbie question but I am having an amazing amount of trouble creating a sitemap for our site Bestride.com. We just did a complete redesign (look and feel, functionality, the works) and now I am trying to create a site map. Most of the generators I have used "break" after reaching some number of pages. I am at a loss as to how to create the sitemap. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestRide0 -
Can 404 results from external links hurt site ranking?
Hello, I'm helping a university transition to a brand new website. In some cases the URLs will change between the old site and new site. They will put 301 redirects in place to make sure that people who have old URLs will get redirected properly to the new URLs. However they also have a bunch of old pages that they aren't using anymore. They don't really care if people still try to get to them (because they don't think many will), but they do care about the overall search engine rankings. I know that if a site has internal 404 links, that could hurt rankings. However can external links that return a 404 hurt rankings? Ryan
Technical SEO | | GreenHatWeb0 -
Can we use our existing site content on new site?
We added 1000s of pages unique content on our site and soon after google release penguin and we loose our ranking for major keywords and after months of efforts we decided to start a new site. If we use all the existing site content on new domain does google going to penalized the site for duplicate content or it will be treated as unique? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mozfreak0 -
How do you find bad links to your site?
My website has around 900 incoming links and I have a Google 50 penalty that is sitewide. I have been doing research and from what I can see is that the 50 penalty is usually associated with scetchy links. The penalty started last year. I had about 40 related domains to my main site and each had a simple one page site with a link to the main site. (I know I screwed up) I cleaned up all of those links by removing them. The single page site still exist, but they have no links and several of them still rank very well. I also had an outside SEO person that bought a few links. I came clean with Google and told them everything. I gave them all of my sites and that the SEO person had bought links. I gave them full disclosure and removed everything. I have one site that I can't get the link removed from. I have contacted them numerous times to remove the link and I get no response. I am curious if anyone has had a simular experience and how they corrected the situation. Another issue is that my site is "thin" because its an ecommerce affiliate site and full of affiliate links. I work in the costume market. I'm also afraid that I have other bad links pointing to my site. Dooes anyone know of a tool to identify bad links that Google may be penalizing me for at this time. Here is Google's latest denial of my reconsideration request. Dear site owner or webmaster of XXXXXXXXX.com. We received a request from a site owner to reconsider XXXXXXXX.com for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. We've reviewed your site and we believe that some or all of your pages still violate our quality guidelines. In order to preserve the quality of our search engine, pages from XXXXXXXXXX.com may not appear or may not rank as highly in Google's search results, or may otherwise be considered to be less trustworthy than sites which follow the quality guidelines. If you wish to be reconsidered again, please correct or remove all pages that are outside our quality guidelines. When such changes have been made, please visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/reconsideration?hl=en and resubmit your site for reconsideration. If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality
Technical SEO | | tadden0 -
As an agency, what is the best way to handle being the webmaster and hosting provider for several sites (some of which are in the same industry and have natural links to each other)?
We are an agency that builds and hosts websites for several companies (some of which happen to be in the same industry - and therefore naturally link to each other - we do not dictate). In regards to handling their domain registrations, webmaster tools account, google analytics account, and servers, what is the best practice to avoid Google thinking that these companies are affilliated? Even though they aren't affiliated, we are afraid that us being the "webmaster" of these sites and having shared servers for them that we may be affecting them.
Technical SEO | | grayloon0