Is IP address a Google ranking factor?

Does the IP address of your website’s server affect your search engine rankings? According to some sources on the internet, your IP address is a ranking signal used by Google.

But does your IP address have the potential to help or hurt your search rankings? Read on to learn if IP addresses are a Google ranking factor.

The claim: IP address as a ranking factor

Articles online from reputable marketing sites claim that Google has over 200 “known” ranking factors.

These lists often contain statements about flagged IP addresses that affect rankings or higher quality links because they come from separate Class C IP addresses.

Fortunately, these lists sparked numerous conversations with Google employees about the validity of IP addresses as ranking factors in Google’s algorithm.

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The evidence against IP address as a ranking factor

In 2010, Matt Cutts, former head of Google’s web spam team, was asked if a client’s website ranking would be affected by spam websites on the same server.

His answer:

“It wouldn’t be at the top of my list of things to worry about. So I understand, and Google understands, that shared web hosting is happening. You can’t really control who else is on that IP address or Class C subnet.”

Ultimately, Google decided that if they took action against a Class C IP address or subnet, the spammers would simply switch to a different IP address. Hence, it would not be the most efficient way to tackle the problem.

Cutts noted a specific exception where an IP address had 26,000 spam sites and one non-spam site that required closer examination, but reiterated that this was an exceptional outlier.

in the 2011a tweet by Kaspar Szymanski, another former member of Google’s web spam team, stated that Google has the right to take action when free hosts are massively spammed.

In 2016, during a Google Webmaster Central Office Hours, John Mueller, a search advocate at Google, was asked if having all websites in a group on the same c-block of IP addresses was a problem.

He answered:

“No, that’s perfectly fine. So this isn’t something where you have to buy artificial IP address blocks just to mess things up.

And especially if you’re on a CDN, you might end up on an IP address block used by other companies. Or if you are on shared hosting then these things happen. It’s not something you have to move artificially.”

March 2018, Mueller was asked if changing IP with a different geo location would affect SEO. He has answered:

“If you move to a server in a different location? Usually not. Otherwise we will get enough geo-targeting information, e.g. B. from the TLD and Geotargeting settings in Search Console.”

A few months laterMueller responded to a tweet asking if Google still counts bad neighborhoods as a ranking signal and if a dedicated IP is necessary.

“Shared IP addresses are good for searching! Many hosting/CDN environments use them.”

In October 2018Mueller was asked whether the location of the IP address matters for a website’s ranking. His answer was simple: “No.”

A few tweets later, in the same Twitter thread, another user commented that IP addresses matter when it comes to backlinks. Mueller again responded with a simple “no.”

In June 2019Mueller received a question about Google Search Console showing a website’s IP address instead of a domain name. His answer:

“It’s usually a bad idea to have your IP addresses indexed. IP addresses are often temporary.”

He suggested that the user ensures that the IP address is redirected to their domain.

A few months laterWhen asked if links from IP addresses were bad, Mueller tweeted:

“Links from IP addresses are absolutely fine. Most of the time this means the server wasn’t set up well (we canonicalized the IP address and not the hostname, which is easy to fix with redirects and rel=canonical), but that’s just a technical detail. That doesn’t mean they’re bad.”

in the morning 2020Mueller, when asked if he wants to get links from different IP addresses, said the bad part is that the user creates the backlinks themselves – not the IP addresses.

Then in June, Mueller was asked what happens when a website buys links through an IP address. Would an IP level action be taken?

“Shared hosting and CDNs on a single IP are really common. Having some bad sites on an IP doesn’t make everything bad on that IP.”

in the SeptemberMueller said during a discussion about bad neighborhoods affecting search rankings:

“I am not aware of any ranking algorithm that takes such IPs into account. Check out bloggers. There are great sites that do well (ignore the on-site restrictions, etc.) and there are horrible sites that are hosted there. It’s all the same infrastructure, same IP addresses.”

in the NovemberGary Illyes, Chief of Sunshine and Happiness at Google, shared a fun fact.

“Fun fact: Changing a website’s underlying infrastructure like servers, IPs, etc. can change how quickly and often Googlebot crawls from that website. That’s because it actually recognizes that something has changed, prompting it to relearn how fast and how often to crawl.”

While this is interesting information, it seems to impact crawling, not ranking. Of course, crawling is required for ranking, but crawling is not a ranking factor.

in the 2021, a Twitter user asked if canonicalizing IPs could positively impact SEO. Mueller replied:

“If people aren’t linking to your website’s IP address (which would be unexpected), there would be no impact on SEO.”

later in December, when asked if an IP address instead of a hostname looks unusual when Google assesses the quality of a link, Meuller said, “IP addresses are fine. The internet has tons of them.”

If you’re worried about your IP address or your hosting company, the consensus seems to be: don’t worry.

Get more insights into Google Ranking Factor.

Our conclusion: IP address is no longer a ranking factor

Perhaps Google has experimented with IP-level actions against spam sites in the past.

However, this must have proved ineffective as we see no confirmation from Google representatives that IP addresses, shared hosting and bad neighborhoods are part of the algorithm.

Therefore, for now, we can conclude that IP addresses are not a ranking factor.

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Featured image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal