I'm curious do the search engines penalize sites that use free webhosting and can using a free webhost harm your seo in any way?
Yes. VERY! But search engines do not penalize your website for it, but at the same time they aren't going to get you going anywhere. 1) Servers are often very slow. 2) They randomly break down. 3) Not very Google friendly. 4) Terrible support. I've down a comparison here - free web hosting.
I understand the negatives of free hosts as far as network outages and slow loading etc, but can you explain this:
The main reason i ask is because i was thinking of having one of my sites on a free host just for the benefit of linking to my other sites using a different ip address. Has anyone else tried this?
exactly, if you use free hosting don't expect to be able to handle much traffic and the slow webpage WILL have a major affect on your rankings imo That being said free webhosting is the best way to get started risk free!
I could see that being fine, never tried though .. and there's nothing wrong with free hosting as far as ranking in Google goes.
Free web hosting is not a bad thing when considered properly, as it depends on what purpose you are using it for. If it is purely for business, then don’t go for it. If not, then you can give it a try.
I don't think it's bad for SEO, the only drawback is free hosting suspend your account any time and they give any support...
Cheers for the reply. I thought of this idea a while ago but only now want to try it out. The only thing that has me concerned is how the search engines consider it. You see the site i want to put on there is not just a test site but rather an established site with good rankings and page rank etc.
Free Hosting won't harm your on SEO unless it the hosting not work well which like what most of here mention about disadvantages of using free hosting. As long your content of your website from that free host or any link bring from there do not harm your website that you would like to push . Then it should not be a big deal.
it not matter to search engine alot that you are using free hosting or shared hosting it is same for them as both are shared but it matter alot feature of your hosting always make it sure that hosting company dont make your site down or slow..And as per me dedicated hosting give you benefit in SEO
I use free hosting with no ads and are very satisfied with the results, unless you try, you never know. Best regards
I have read in a different seo forum that yes it does harm seo as spammers use free hsotings sites to create lots of websites with links back to their own site and therefore websites on free sites don't tend to do as well in the serps. I haven't tried an experiment to see which one does best though.
All that he said and another important point is: There are thousands of websites on the same servers, and some of those sites are used for hacking/phishing purposes, which will also blacklist your domain from google.
Free hosting by itself is not a negative in Google's eyes as long as your site is responsive and fast, but what I would keep an eye on, as others have previously mentioned, is free web hosts tend to attract spammers, and Google recently stated that if there are spammers on a server they reserve the right to block everyone on that web host. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ban-host-13459.html
Adnan959's answer is 100% true and sometimes they may redirect your site to their domains or may be ask you to have their ads too. Free hosts are most looked for by every newbie on the internet and this results into a shit load speeds of the servers and your site will always have a slow page load speed.