Is anyone able to tell me if there is any advantages to having a Dedicated IP for my hosting in terms of search engine ranking. is it true that google prefers websites with dedicated IP's or is that a myth?
Yes it's true that a dedicated IP is needed for a website. As per my knowledge it's not good to have a website with a dynamic IP address. Because your ip address is bind with your domain name in the web-server and if your ip changes then you won't be able to access your website with your domain name.
I think he mean dedicated IP, not static IP. Dedicated IP is IP that belongs only to your site (i.e. 1 IP = 1 site). Static IP is IP that never changes for server (i.e. 1 server = 1 constant IP). I tried dedicated IP, and in fact I didn't find any great advantages of it. Yes, it can improve SERP positions, but the changes won't be enormous. On the other hand, it costs not very much so you can try it.
How does it increase anonymity? When you use a Godaddy server or something then you are hosting with thousands of other sites on the same IP. If you have your own IP, then since it is only you, you lose your anonymity. It seems the opposite is true. As far as having Dedicated IP, it can certainly help, but if you got an IP that was previously used for spam then you will find it a detriment to be using that IP.
This does not seem any advantage, even if the influential, it is just one of many factors, some factors, compared with other factors, this factor is still relatively small proportion of the
Getting a dedicated IP will be only worth it if you have an anonymous ftp enabled website, e-commerce (if you want to be able to accept credit cards) or you want to resell hosting accounts. There are a lot of myths around the dedicated IP's and SEO or Mails launched from a dedicated IP. For this last, it can actually be a pain and you will probably get black listed in no time if you are thinking about sending some emails out. Good luck!
A dedicated IP protects yourself from the actions of others that may be residing on your IP now. One bad apple could get the whole server blackballed in the search engines. While there may be no immediate benefit, look at having your own IP as an insurance policy against potential future risks.
Lets crack open this debate. From a search perspective, I rank in numerous #1 positions in Google for some very high competition keywords, with websites that are on shared IP's. To be perfectly blunt, if you are building good links, I see absolutely no advantage to it at all. I know that many will disagree with me - note for those who di disagree, show me an example of how using a dedicated IP has helped you rank higher, and I might actually believe the claim. Up until now, I have seen no proof at all. As for the only reason that I see being reasonable as to why to use separate IP's is that it does provide anonymity. I use them for that reason alone. Separate website lusters on different IP's, keeps my business private and away from prying eyes. As for what Google prefers... what they prefer has absolutely nothing to do with the tech side of your website. If you create awesome content that people respond to and share, and is valuable for those who are searching, no one is going to care about whether or not you are hosted on a dedicated IP or not.
It's ok to have shared IP, the number of dedicated IPs is limited so google can't penalize sites using shared IPs, unless another site(s) from the same IP does something very fishy.
It makes no difference with google rankings... listen to Matt Cutts of Google http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsSwqo16C8s
More proof that few people on DP ever read or understand previous posts. (And here only one guy did.)
Hi mate, Advantages of a dedicated IP for SEO Some say that putting your site on a dedicated IP will give you a boost in search engine ranking results for that particular website. I do not agree with this. If you have one website, a dedicated IP will not rank you higher in the search engines. BUT, if you have a multiple websites, it is to your advantage to put each of these on a different IP because the search engine is less likely to connect your websites together. Here is an example to help you understand this better: You have 4 websites and you want to make a 5th. Your 4 websites are ranked but are all on the same IP address. You place a link on each of your 4 websites to your 5th in order to pass on rank value to the 5th. The search engine will see that your new site has links from 4 websites. When it goes to check the IPs for the sites linking to the 5th, it will find that they are all hosted on the same server because the IP addresses are the same. The search engine will assign less rank value to the 5th site because it knows that the 4 sites linking to it are all related/owned by the same person. If you put each site on a different IP, it will ‘think’ the sites are totally unrelated therefore assigning more link value to those links. thanks for your good thread...