Google Pagerank and "Class-C Addresses"

Tue Sep 22 16:16:44 UTC 2009

On Sep 21, 2009, at 2:01 PM, William Pitcock wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-09-21 at 18:18 +0200, Sebastian Wiesinger wrote:
>> Hello Nanog,
>>
>> I'm looking into a weird request which more and more customers have.
>> They want "different Class C addresses", by which they mean IPs in
>> different /24 subnets.
>>
>> The apparent reason for this is that Google will rank links from
>> different /24 higher then links from the same /24. So it's a SEO
>> thingy.
>>
>
> They are wrong.  Unfortunately, this is a rumour that is being  
> cashed in
> greatly by companies like GotWebHost.com, which offer "SEO hosting".
> They may honestly believe that this is true, it is not.  Infact, IPs
> have nothing to do at all, with PageRank, and don't let any of these  
> SEO
> crackheads tell you otherwise.
>
> A google employee blogged about this topic at:
> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/

Yes, and I'll second this -- PageRank does not in any way get improved  
by hosting on multiple IPs (or different ranges or Class A's or Class- 
C's[0] or swamp space or space from different RIRs or "premium  
addresses" (?!) or anything like that...).

>
>> I googled a bit and found pages after pages of FUD and such great
>> things as the "Class C Checker":  "This free Class C Checker tool
>> allows you to check if some sites are hosted on the same Class C IP
>> Range."
>>
>> My question is: Is there any proof that Google does differentiate
>> between /24s, or even better is there any proof that this isn't the
>> case?

There's Matt's word and Craig Silverstein's word and (not that it  
count for as much) my word -- PageRank does NOT differentiate between / 
24's.

Google has stated this multiple times and we have nothing to gain by  
lying or making things up -- the SEO folks on the other hand have a  
large incentive to claim that IPs *do* make a difference as they sell  
this as a service...

W

[0]: Yes, yes, I know, settle down....

>> I will not give a customer space from different address blocks
>> just because he read it in a SEO magazine.
>
> As said above: No, it is not true.  Further, SEO is mostly a load of
> bullshit that only delivers temporary results, as the search engines
> will change their algorithms, etcetera.
>
>>
>> Perhaps someone from Google itself can answer this question?
>>
>> Also how do you handle such requests? I expect I'm not the only one
>> who gets them.
>
> It depends on how much money they pay me.
>
> If they pay me a lot of money, then I will likely give them what they
> want.  If not, well, that's too bad for them.
>
> It doesn't matter to me, regardless, provided that they aren't  
> violating
> my AUP by you know, spamming or something along those lines.  In those
> cases, well, they probably wouldn't be asking for more IPs, because  
> they
> would be offline.
>
> William
> -- 
> William Pitcock                 SystemInPlace - Simple Hosting  
> Solutions
> 1-866-519-6149                             http://www.systeminplace.net/
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>
>

-- 
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them  
together, they make a pretty good raft.
                 --Anon.