Hi I'm moving my site to a new host. I know that many people claim that a dedicated IP gives you nothing when it comes to SEO but I'm not putting this subject up for debate. I paid for a dedicated ip, but my new host blocks direct access through it meaning if I enter the IP instead of the site URL i get nothing. They claim that Google's crawlers aren't affected by this block (as they use A records and not a web borwser - forgive my ignorance but I don't really know what that means so I may have gotten the name wrong) and so the crawlers do see my site as one with a dedicated IP. Is that true?
Your host is doing you a huge favor in my personal opinion. Since Google will treat all of the following as completely different websites: www.google.com, google.com, 114.23.24.432, sub.google.com. All of those are different. If Google crawled the IP address then it would look like duplicate content to Google. Of course this is just based on what I know. You might want to get some other opinions on this. For the most part it's a good thing.
Hi Cameron, Thank for the quick reply but I'm interested in one very specific thing. The host is claiming it's only people using browsers who can't access the site directly via IP, but search engine spiders aren't affected by this block. I need to know if thats possible.
I don't think I should of tried on this one. I don't know enough to answer your question. I can tell you that I could see that it's entirely impossible from blocking visitors from accessing your website via and IP address. While simultaneously you don't block any Search Engine crawlers from accessing your website via IP. Of course as I mentioned above I don't entirely know. Just trying to help you as much as possible with this problem.
Actually I don't I do know enough about this problem to answer it: Yes, it's entirely possible to block visitors from accessing your website through an IP while simultaneously allowing SE spiders. What confused me about your question is this: "(as they use A records and not a web borwser - forgive my ignorance but I don't really know what that means so I may have gotten the name wrong) and so the crawlers do see my site as one with a dedicated IP. Is that true? " I'm not understand. They used an A record to block people from visiting through an IP address? I don't think they can do that...
Thanks Cameron I appreciate your efforts. I would really like to hear an opinion from someone who fully understands this issue.
the claim is right, block access the IP won't effect your SEO. if you really like the IP access, buy a SSL, a HTTPS site will have the IP access