You Don’t Have To Worry About Unique IP Addresses Says Google

If you have done any SEO at all (or have read about it), you have probably heard/read of people warning you to always use unique IP addresses if you have many sites set up on the Internet. The reason being – you don’t want to fall into a bad network that gets banned by Google entirely.

Even though there might be some truth to that (in exclusive cases), it is not entirely accurate. On very rare occasions, Google may ban an entire free host, but the chances of that happening are very slim.

Google’s John Mueller answered on this topic when he was asked the following in this Google Plus Hangout:

All of our group’s websites share the same C-block. Can cannibalization occur between different websites sharing the same hosting? Can site B’s ability to rank be impaired by the fact that site A is trying to rank for the same set of keywords? Is that a problem?

To which John responded with:

No, absolutely not. It is perfectly fine. That is not something where you need to artificially buy IP address blocks to just shuffle things around. And especially if you are on a CDN, then you will end up on an IP block with other companies as well.

Or if you are on a shared hosting then these things happen. That is not something that you need to artificially move around.

So there you have it. You don’t have to worry about mixing it up with your IPs if you own many websites and there’s nothing fishy going on with them if you know what I mean.