This has been a long time debate in search engine forums and online chats whether to host multiple domains/websites on single ip or not. Some people and veterans say ‘one must have unique ip for each domain’ and some people say ‘no need to have it because search engines take the URLs in to account not ips’.

Most of the hosting companies with reasonable hosting prices don’t offer static ips for the customers unless the customer really needs it like setting up SSL on their websites. If you insists of getting a static ip for your domain it will cost you few more dollars per month.

Before going in to that topic, we will see what is the meaning of shared ip and dedicated ip.

What is the meaning of dedicated(static) ip and shared ip?

Dedicated(Static) ip:

Dedicated ip is unique to your website. For example 123.2.234.234 is your website ip address, you can access your website by typing -

http://123.2.234.234/ in the browser.

That means this unique number represents your website in the World Wide Web.

Shared ip:

Shared ip is shared by two or more websites/domains. You can access the websites that share the same ip by -

http://www.123.2.234.234/~user1/
http://www.123.2.234.234/~user2/
http://www.123.2.234.234/~user3/

Questions regarding dedicated and shared ips:

1. Problem with banning: Do search engines ban web sites based on ip?

Years back the search engines used to take in to account the ip address of the websites. Search engine Technology has changed and virtual hosting is becoming popular, the URLs becoming the priority than ip addresses of
the websites.

Here is an answer from Google Director of Technology Craig Silverstein regarding ip based shared host:

QUESTION: Google and IP address.
by Anonymous Coward

Why in this day and age does google continue to penalize sites that are virtual hosted? With ip addresses becoming harder to get/justify every day why does google discount the relevance of links that don’t come from a unique ip address. Please don’t just deny it, I think the Internet community deserves an explanation.

ANSWER by Craig:

I can’t just deny it? What are my other choices? [:)] Actually, Google handles virtually hosted domains and their links just the same as domains on unique IP addresses. If your ISP does virtual hosting correctly, you’ll never see a difference between the two cases. We do see a small percentage of ISPs every month that misconfigure their virtual hosting, which might account for this persistent misperception–thanks for giving me the chance to dispel a myth!

Taken from slashdot.org

Virtual hosting is a fairly common setup with many web sites, more common than many people think. It is said that sharing ip is not that bad if all domains are behaving good with out spamming search engines.

When I wrote to Inkotomi support desk about this sharing ips, check the answer that they gave to me:

* My question:

Are search engines index only one site from one IP address (one DOMAIN (not URL) per one IP address) even though I submit both of them regularly?

Inkotomi support service:

When submitting sites, search engines only take into account the URL that is being submitted. Not the IP it came from. If the pages are different then there will not be a problem.

Virtual domains are very common on the internet, so if what is mentioned was true in all cases, search engines basically would not be effective in finding anything.

The problem mentioned is most likely not all that common, especially when priority submission are used due to the frequent refresh of details.

* My question:

If 10 sites are hosted on one IP. If one site was banned because of spamming or someother thing. This banning is based on IP or domain name? If it is based on ip then all other sites are affected in search engine positioning?

Inkotomi support service:

Most engines will only ban the name(URL) and not the IP, although some may ban the IP as well. It is pretty much up to the individual engines how they do this.

If you suspect an IP has been banned you should contact the engine in question and sort it out with them.

Published with the permission of Karl Anderson,
Trellian Support.

2. Are shared ips are slow to access when compared to static ips?

This is completely disbelief that sharing ip slows down the websites. There are thousands of websites on one ip and if all those sites slow down, that hosting company must have lot of angry customers. Speed of a web site depends on the server speed and type of server where the site is hosted, not type of ip.

3. What is HTTP/1.1? How is it useful in Virtual domain Hosting?

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) defines how Web pages are requested and transmitted across the Internet.

HTTP/1.1 improves the virtual hosting business by including the hostname as a header rather than by IP address. This means that the server can support multiple virtual hosts without wasting IP addresses. If you are running a browser that support this feature of HTTP/1.1 (Netscape Version 3 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3 and all higher versions) your site can be viewed by header and not IP address.

HTTP/1.1 accounts for over 95% of the browsers running today. There are more important security reasons for upgrading older versions of Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer rather than using old versions.

Older browsers that are not capable of resolving several virtual hosts to a single IP number will instead displays a default index document that would show all virtual accounts that were assigned to that IP address, allowing the visitor to click on a link and go to their desired web site.

4. Do I really need dedicated ip for my web ste?

Advantages of Dedicated ip:

* If you want your own SSL certificate installed on your site.
* If you want anonymous ftp for your web site.
* No risk of search engine banning: If your web site is hosted on a shared ip and there are some illegal web sites (like spamming, adult sites) on the same ip, there is possibility that your web site also banned by some search engines along with those web sites. (?)

5. Are there any drawbacks with Shared ip hosting?

Nothing much … There are no noticeable differences for the surfers. However, there are few limitations to ’shared IP hosting’.

At this point I want to point you at two threads on one of the search engine forums (highrankings.com):

Multiple Sites On The Same Ip:
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=26981

Shared Ip Hosting Vs. Different C Class Ip’s, There is any benefit?
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=29511

Disadvantages of Shared ip:

* You cannot use Anonymous FTP
* Older browsers such as lynx, Netscape IE less than version 3 cannot view your site on a shared IP (I don’t think people still using these old browsers)
* You need dedicated IP for SSL on your site.
* Much concern to a webmaster is banning of his web site by some search engines.
* Another concern is linking between web sites that are hosted on same ip. Some people ask the quality given to these links by search engines as all web sites share one ip.

After saying all these, I can say that 4 of my sites are hosted on same ip block WITHOUT any problem because all four are on different niche and all four are linked by some text links from one another. As long as you don’t spam search engines, you would be fine with all glory to You!

Author: Radhika (c)
http://www.webmasters-central.com/




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Posted in: Search engine Marketing