I searched on this and couldn't find anything less than 6 months old and it wasn't really about 'this' so my apologies if it's been discussed but.... I recently ran across some information that said that you can be dropped from search engines for having your site on shared hosting with bad neighborhoods. http://www.jimboykin.com/seo-tip-get-your-own-ip-address/ (just one of several about this) Then I found a way to check for bad neighborhoods on your ip go to http://search.msn.com and search... This will list all the sites that have any of these words in their site that share your ip address. do it just on the ip address and it shows all the sites that share your ip address I find this interesting because I had always used the dedicated ip address on my websites and in an effort to save a little $$$ I removed it from a couple of sites. Low and behold on the last pr update, the sites that no longer had the dedicated ip and were always pr5 from the first pr update they had suddenly dropped to pr4 but the sites that I left the dedicated ip address on remained pr5. Not for nothing, but I'm putting the dedicated ip on all my sites now! Lisa
im having a similar problem right now. im also on a shared hosting account, and my ip address seems to be under 1 of the spam trap lists out there. i contacted my host and asked whether he could do anything an they basically said, well your on a shared server with hundreds of other accounts so it could be any one of them causing this. my only options was to either moved to a dedicated server or take my business elsewhere.
Shared servers suck. You can never tell who your sharing with. Best thing to do is either find a good share plan that doesn't have spammers or get your own server. the later of the two being a lot more expensive.
Kadiem, I have heard this too, but I am not really sure what to believe. The PR drop that you saw may be unrelated, as I had PR5 sites on a dedicated IP that dropped. Plus, I think if your IP was dropped for bad neighborhoods, then it would be dropped all together, no? So if you did site:domain.com , your site wouldn't come up. Not really sure, but this seems to be the logical progression. Morty
Hey Morty! Ya, I don't know, I was just surprised at the sites that dropped pr which were good content sites and the ones that retained it were a word cloud type site and a seo contest site! It could be coincidence I agree but I think it's worth considering as a potential issue. I don't think google would ban a site altogether 'just' for being on a bad neighborhood ip - but I can see it somehow effecting pr - even just a little. Lisa
I suggest getting a dedicated IP (not the same as a dedicated server). There hasn't been any proven SEO advantage to having one, but there is no advantage in NOT having one. It only costs a few more bucks a month to be on the safe side and disassociated from those bad neighborhood sites.
An interesting post and it got me concerned .. BUT ... then I thought ... If you are penalised for this then it would be possible for your competitors to set up hosting on you shared IP server and start adding bad neighbourhoods. My thoughts are that if G penalised then this could start a melt down as competitors try and undermine each others websites and in the result, undermining Gs quest to provide SERPs that match with what their customers are searching for. Just athought.
Well this happened to me too. I changed the hosting and dang my PR went crazy. Right now I have one dedicated for my sites that I love most.
This is pretty much the school of thought I go with. Dedicated IP's usually cost an extra $2-$3 bucks a month, and is well worth the peace of mind
Lisa, you do what you want, but I promise you that the PR drop had nothing whatsoever to do with your IP address. -Michael