What are the potential issues of using the same server and ip address for multiple websites?

doublethinker · May 4, 2017

Besides the impact of ip host location on site SEO, what are the potential issues of using the same server and ip address for multiple websites?

Could an unknown player identify all the sites registered to the IP?

Is that (and it seems obvious) a way that Google identifies PBNs? And if so does that devalue cross-network links?

JasonSc · May 4, 2017

doublethinker said:
Besides the impact of ip host location on site SEO, what are the potential issues of using the same server and ip address for multiple websites?

Speaking strictly from an SEO point of view and assuming you are 90% white hat. We have not had any issues having multiple sites on the same IP address. Look at shared hosting, they have hundreds if not thousands of sites on the same IP address.

Speaking from personal experience: Last year we merged several VPS into 2 dedicated servers. We did not see any negative impacts from this.

If you are thinking about interlinking sites on the same IP I would tread lightly.

doublethinker said:
Could an unknown player identify all the sites registered to the IP?

Yes. You can do reverse DSN lookups and IP looks ups. http://viewdns.info/reverseip/

If you are worried about people finding your portfolio of sites, you can partially hide with CloudFlare. The normal SEO does not know how to find real IP addresses from CloudFlare, but its not 100% safe for hiding IP address or name servers. See @CCarter post here.

doublethinker · May 4, 2017

JasonSc said:
If you are thinking about interlinking sites on the same IP I would tread lightly.

Yes I was thinking about this. Not a PBN and I sure as heck don't want to be seen as one.

JasonSc · May 4, 2017

doublethinker said:
Yes I was thinking about this. Not a PBN and I sure as heck don't want to be seen as one.

I personally have no data or experience with this, only hearsay, so I will defer this to someone who does.