Another Big day for IPv6 - 10% native penetration

Tue Jan 5 07:41:32 UTC 2016

* Sander Steffann <sander at steffann.nl>

> > We just need Google to announce that IPv6 enabled sites will get a
> > slight bonus in search rankings. And just like that, there will
> > suddenly be a business reason to implement IPv6.  
> 
> I already discussed that with them a long time ago, but they weren't
> convinced. Maybe now is the time to discuss it again :)

I've mentioned this in other forums before, but I might as well repeat
it here too:

I can understand that Google (or Netflix for that matter) are reluctant
to engage in pure IPv6 activism by providing different or improved
content to users which have no IPv6 connectivity. However, maybe they'd
be more open to the idea if it was limited to IPv6 clients only? That
is, IFF the Google user submitting the search is doing it using IPv6,
then consider the result entries' IPv6 availability when sorting the
result set.

My reasoning is that there would be an objective techincal reason for
doing it. The client is demonstrably capable of using IPv6 and prefers
to do so, and as it has been shown that IPv6 performs better than IPv4
(see e.g. https://youtu.be/_7rcAIbvzVY), giving priority to IPv6-enabled
results seems a logical thing to do. Much in the same way that it makes
sense to rank mobile-optimised sites high in result sets returned to
mobile clients.

I'd imagine that the promise of improved Google ratings for 10%/25% of
global/U.S. users will still be a significant enough business reason
for web site operators to seriously consider implementing IPv6.

Tore