At the hosting company I use, when ordering shared hosting it presents the option to added a dedicated IP address, which I know is required for SSL installs, but it also says " it also increases the visibility for search engines." I've never heard this before anywhere, thoughts?
Well, it wont really increase the visibility to the search engines, but is somehow a better option in my eyes and usually not that expensive... The main plus (if it could be called a plus) in my opinion, is that you will be sure your site is not sharing the same IP with sites which could be in the "grey zone" or doing something bad... I have read some interview with Matt Cuts from Google some years ago, and he said that it wouldn't be a problem, as well as addon domains - he said he did make some test with the latter in regard of SEO. If it does not bother your budget too much - get a dedicated one. I have ran my sites for years without dedicated IPs - and there was no problem at all, neither any difference since I started hosting them on dedicated such, so it's up to you There is one more point - if you are selling links or any other "dofollow" ads, then potential buyers are likely to choose such from dedicated, different C-class IPs
a dedicated ip address doesn't have any direct involvement with search engine ranking, however being on a shared ip can cause your website to be associated with or even blocked/blammed for bad behavior of other sites that are hosted on your shared ip address.
How about if a website is blacklisted on shared IP, will it effect another website hosted on same IP ?
Not very likely, but it might... That's why it is a good idea to have a dedicated IP and be sure you are safe.
shared IP Can cause issues if there are other sites under the same IP that might have been blacklisted, blocked by google or other search engines, If you intend to blog seriously, its advisable to have a dedicated IP. Its not much expensive these days, if the hosting is a shared account.
In a way, yes it can help your SEO, but not to the point that it is the only thing that you need to rank high in search engines. The disadvantage in using a shared IP address for your website is that you could be sharing a reputation with others, which means if the other website sharing with your IP is doing malicious things online, your reputation could be hurt as well even though you are not doing anything bad by your domain. With a dedicated IP, you are safe from other websites unconsciously hurting your reputation online.
Akismet sometimes bans IP from prolific spammers but most of the time they ban the domain, if you’re on the same IP as a spammer then sometimes you can be labelled the same as the spammer, if it’s something you are trying to build a good reputation around, I would go for the dedicated IP. For the sake of 2$ a month for a dedicated IP its worth doing with all projects as long as you know you can generate that $2 back in 30 days.