I never understood that either. It doesn't make sense, how can a host influence anything to do with SEO, apart from the load time of the website? Hosts can have negative effects (such as hosting other sites which are bad neighbourhoods) but can't positively influence SEO, surely?
You can make a search here on DigitalPoint or on Google. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/tags.php?tag=seo+hosting @²nd reply: it does. Sites for Belgian people who are hosted in Belgium will have an advantage over Belgian sites hosted on a server in USA. Not only that, but in terms of linkbuilding this SEO hosting might become important for real SEO-ers. I don't think it make such a big difference to pay so much more for 'seo' hosting, but it does make a difference Greetz!
Geo location wasn't mentioned. Agreed an IP address in one country holds more relevances to searches done in that country. A host however has no influence over backlinks to a specific site it is hosting, so a host has no relevance whatsoever regarding linkbuilding, so "SEO hosting" is not important at all.
It is said that search engines often take into account the SPEED or TIME it takes for your website to load also a reliable host which offers 99% uptime so that your site never goes off the internet. Thats basically the knowledge I have on the subject.
What Is SEO Hosting? & What Is A “Class C†IP Address? Every computer on the Internet has an IP address. Your computer, your web enabled phone and the server that hosts your websites all have IP addresses. They usually look something like this: 67.45.123.87 As you see above, there are 4 sets of numbers separated by dots. The first set of numbers is the ‘A’ class The second set is the ‘B’ class The third set of numbers the ‘C’ class And finally the fourth set is the ‘D’ class Something a bit like this: A.B.C.D Inside data centers where your server is located related servers or websites are often hosted by servers with the same ‘C’ class of ips. So their ips might look something like this: 67.45.123.87 67.45.123.79 The search engines know this and can spot when related sites cross link to each other from within the same class C ip address. These links are often filtered out of the ranking algorithms. If your site has too many of these types of links it can even bring a penalty to your site. That’s why a few companies came up with the idea of “SEO Hostingâ€. This is where they will sell you hosting on completely different sets of class C ip addresses. People often use this to hide their mini site networks, blog “farms†or cross linking networks. Keep in mind that Google can also see your contact information for your domain. So if you go through all the time and expense of setting up this type of hosting it would be silly to use all the same contact information on your entire network. That stands out like a sore thumb to Google. http://www.billmcintosh.com