Dedicated and Shared IP Addresses

Some of us have been discussing lately the topic of dedicated and shared IP addresses for websites, and how they may affect the ability for sites to rank. It’s a long-known fact that sharing an IP address with a site that has been penalized or banned is almost guaranteed to be problems for everyone else who shares that IP. Once a search engine decides to penalize or ban a particular domain, they may choose to ban the IP address that the domain is hosted on. Well guess what... any site that is hosted on that IP will also be banned! Not fair, you say? Don't let this happen to you -- get a dedicated IP address for your site immediately!

Now, sharing an IP with other sites doesn’t guarantee that you will be banned or penalized by a search engine, but it’s just not worth the risk. If your website is hosted on the same IP as a porn site, you're really asking for trouble. The same goes for pharmacy and casino sites. Most hosting companies will upgrade your service to a dedicated IP for about $3-5 a month in addition to your regular hosting fees. Well worth the price, in my opinion.

Here are the tools that you can use for free to see not only how many sites share an IP with your domain, but also see what those domain names are that you’re sharing with:

• Go to http://www.dnsstuff.com/
• Enter the domain name into the “Domain Info” box and click “Get Info”
• You will be taken to a page with some terrific information about the domain. The IP address for the site will be listed halfway down the page on the right side, and it will be a link
• Click the IP address link, and under “Reverse IP”, you will see how many sites this IP address hosts. You can also click on that result and dig even deeper.
• Click the “X websites” link for the reverse IP lookup. On your first visit, you will have to register for free. Sign up using an email address that you can actually check (a confirmation link will come via email to activate your membership). Once you are a member, this tool will show you every domain name on the server. "1 websites" means you are the only domain on that server, and it's probably dedicated.

You can always contact your hosting company directly to verify if you have a dedicated IP address or not. If you don't, request it. If your host doesn't offer dedicated IPs, switch hosting companies right away.