IP Address - How important is it?

[Aerpel]

I read somewhere on this post that not having a dedicated IP address for a website was not good as far as search engine ranking goes. Now I can't find where I read this. Is this a proven fact? Is it stated somewhere where I can go and find out for sure or is this just a theory? Our hosting provider says that he would have to have proof before he would prrovide us our own IP. Also, would changing to a new provider hurt what listing we now have if we used the same domain name and content? We too went from a number two listing to having to type our domain name in Google to find our site.Thank you in advance.A little reading would have yeilded this,http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic39915.htmlIt answers your questions pretty much....I'm offMake sure you read this: http://interviews.slashdot.org/article. ... 03/1352239Ok, so there is a possibility that virtual hosting could hurt rankings. How do I convince my provider? Also as I asked before will it hurt what rankings we do have with other search engines if we move the site to another provider that does offer IP addresses with their hosting?You guys are very helpful, thanks for the info.I'm not sure you saw this part.....it's a quote from the head of Technology Development at GoogleFrom question #5 in the link above:"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"If you're having issues with virtual hosting and search engines it's due to the bad setup on your server...not the lack of a dedicated ip.As far as your hosting provider needing proof of this affecting your site in order to get a dedicated ip....why do they need that? Can't they just give you an ip for a few bucks a month?Short answers: Wrong. There is no need to convinve your provider and no your rankings nor listing are affected when switiching hosts. Long answer and logic behind the same:The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) manages the Internet numbering resources for North America, a portion of the Caribbean, and sub-equatorial Africa. There are several other governing bodies for the rest of the world eg: Asia, Latin America and Europe. ARIN rules stipulate that a host can not issue a dedicated IP to anyone except for purposes which can not be achieved via shared IP. Acceptable uses are: SSL certs, nameservers, anonymous ftp servers, etc. Thus it is prohibited to issue dedicated IP's for 90% of all websites and not a money saving measure as implied above. The basis for this ruling from ARIN are that the IP numbering system as is are a finite resource. Each registry has a specific block of IP's assigned to the regions they govern. This makes it impossible to issue a dedicated IP to every domain on the internet. Which is why the shared IP system was mandated, adopted and accepted universally. Rumors, myths, etc are based on falsehoods, half truths illogical data and/or lies. When you apply a little logic you will realize that Microsoft nor Disney will pay you $1,000 to forward an email to ten (10) people or that this rumor makes sense. However since some of you are sure to be skeptical for any number of reasons let me continue to apply logic to dispell this rumor.Domains do in fact resolve to an IP address. However it is the domain that is unique and tracked, not the IP. Hence the reason why you can not have the same identical domain name registered to more than one person worldwide. SE's track domain names, not IP's and sort results by relevance, and/or sponsorship. Relevance is determined not only by how many sites link to a particular domain but also how many sites link to the site linking to the domain. For example when your domain is considered for relevance and there are dozens of links to your domain from popular sites eg: ozzu your relevance is considered higher. When your domain is considered for relevance and you have dozens of links from domains which do little or no traffic then your relevance is considered lower.Making any sense?? Good let's drive the point home. Content filters eg: Netnanny, Cybersitter, etc know that ARIN prohibits the assignment of dedicated IP's to 90% of all domains. Accordingly they filter content by domain and not IP. If the IP were tracked then a content filterer eg: NetNanny, or Cybersitter would be chasing it's tail. Since any domain wishing to circumvent the content filter would simply have to change hosts er go get a new IP and all would once again be well. The only entity that penalizes by IP are spam databases. They do this to force the Host/Net-Block owner to take action against the culprit. Last but not least URL stands for Unique/Uniform Resource Locater. In either case the defintion is the same:A string of text that specifies the location of an object accessible through the internet using acceptable protocols. The most well known being "http://". However many others exist eg: "telnet://", "news:", "ftp". etc.Bottom line there exists no basis in fact to believe that a dedicated IP will affect the page rank, or listing of any domain in SE's. Furthermore any attempt to implement such a system would be illogical because:1. There are not enough IP address to go around.2. Registry rules prohibit assigning dedicated IP's to every domain because of rule #1.robtpala wrote:There is no need to have a dedicated IP I strongly disagree with some of Uncensored-Hosting points cos SE do record the Class C IP of a site.The confusion comes from inbound links where many hosted sites link to each other using all the same Class C ip range. These "sites" are then all considered the same site so it will not really penalise you it just wont be as valuable as many unique class c links pointing to your site.If you suddenly have 1000's of inbound links from many url's but most of them are from a handful of Class C's then your site could be Sandboxed under Google....so there is no need to have a dedicated IP your self unless you are a spammer who has 100's of sites...but then 100's of unique CLASS C IP's are going to be VERY expensive and time consuming to set up!Well done Google (MS Search should learn from G!)Again let's look at what you are saying logically Johan. A class C is defined by the fist three digits of the IP address. Of which 256 possible combinations exist and 254 useable IP's are derived. We already know the IP address numbering system as we know it are a finite resource. If we are to believe your thus far unsupported (from SE's) argument holds credence then we must also agree that it is logical to deploy this idealogy using an even smaller segment of an already finite resource. In other words there are fewer class C's then there are IP numbers. Remember each class C represents 254 useable IP's. Thus I must contend that it is more logical that SE's base relevance on the number of inbound links and the number of inbound links that the referring link has. Rather then basing relevance on the uniqueness of the Class C from every inbound link. However I welcome proof from SE's that: They record the Class C IP of domains with the intent to use said information to form an opinion on the relevance of links to each domain? Johan007 wrote:I am not a Network manager and can not fully explain Class C relevance bur you must understand that there is some IP address recorded because the theory to stop many sites interconnecting has already pretty much proven in the Google "Sandbox".Page Rank is unaffected (but Page Rank is poor factor in rankings) and these links are still counted however they are given the same or about the same value as internal links.Because Page Rank is unaffected is often the reason you will see lower PR sites rank higher than higher (If link text was not factored).Always fun to see this topic pop up again I found a need for a dedicated ip....but not for seo...I was on a virtual ip with 300+ other sites and someone was spamming off the mail server. This was causing mail from my mail server to be bounced back from isp's using the spam blacklist. What I was able to do was to buy a dedicated ip and use it to host all my sites under as virtual addresses....works very well.Its important to clarify that we are talking about 2 defferent things.Summary:1 hosting - (Dedicated IP no effect)2 ip of inbound links - (unique IP