Google Pagerank and "Class-C Addresses"

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

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.

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? I will not give a customer space from different address blocks
just because he read it in a SEO magazine.

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.

Regards,

Sebastian

2

Matt Cutts, who works for Google, has iterated over and over that this is absolutely, positively, not the case and does not help page rank: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/

So there's an answer from someone at Google.

How do I answer such requests? I tell them they if they want to waste their money, that's what this service is for:
http://www.seohosting.com/

Regards,
Mike Gazzerro
www.ubiquityservers.com
866-438-8247 x 500

3

Got to stop using classful addressing terminology... It's only been 16
or so years and you're not referring to:

192.0.0.0/5

Snake-oil salesmen abound in this space. More to the point, any
technique used to sculpt pank-rank scores on a systematic basis is
likely to result in a countervailing adjustment by search engine operators.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Sebastian Wiesinger wrote:

4

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:

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? 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

5

>
> 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.
>

Just in case anyone cares, from personal experience, I can see that Google's
priority is indeed 'rank by content'. Everything else is fluff. I've
chosen a key phrase or two, and incorporated them multiple times into a blog
entry. Looking at Google a couple of days later for those key words, and I
can get a top three ranking quite easily.

Ray

6

This is not true. It's been well documented that PageRank uses a number of
metrics, probably the most important of them (in terms of ranking) being the
number of links to a page or site (and I believe, the PageRank of the
pages/websites those links come from).

One of my websites has consistently been in the top 10 or at worst top 20
results when searching for the word "megapixel" despite the word only
appearing on the resulting page about 4 times - if it was simply content
based there's no way that site would be ranked so highly.

  Scott.

7

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.

I've found that a lot of spammers enjoy having diverse ip's from which to mail/proxy requests. This may just be a case of ignorance/rumors on your customers part, but I might suspect some of them of being spammers...

Leslie

8

On a similar issue, I have a debate going on in my company about SEO
and links coming from IP blocks allocated from different upstream
providers will improve page ranks. (So, if I have block A from
provider 1 and block B from provider 2, web sites linking each other
on block A & B, the rank will go up) Not just different /24, /24s
reassigned from different upstream.

I can't find anything to prove or dis-prove this theory. Anyone have
a link or info on this issue/myth?

I shared this discussion thread and was told it's only discussing
different /24, not /24 allocated to different providers.

As far as I am concerned, if Google used ARIN swip record or routing
entry, it's going to identify us as the end provider so I can't see
how who gave us the IP would matter.

9

* Sebastian Wiesinger:

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.

It's not that weired at all. Others demand the same because it
allegedly increases reliability.

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?

Good luck. Google doesn't disclose their algorithms. There doesn't
appear to be any Google statement on this matter, either.

10

Good luck. Google doesn't disclose their algorithms. There doesn't
appear to be any Google statement on this matter, either.
  
No, but for "honest" folks, they do provide guidelines :

One can't really fault Google for taking the attitude "do it right, then spend your money on advertising (with us). If you do it half-ass and spend your money on SEO instead, we might smite you".

Cheers,

Michael Holstein
Cleveland State University

11

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:
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....