IP ranges and matching WHOIS
-
I have a client who owns two large websites and they sit on the same IP Range: XXX.XX.11.124 and XXX.XX.11.126. Obviously the X's match. Furthermore the whois in the same.
Website A is really old and has millions of pages, but has some unintentional but spammy subdomains that are duplicate content.... we are talking thousands. At this point addressing those subdomains is not an option. Website A also links to millions of times to Website B, but those links are either nofollowed or in javascript.
Website A has a ton of duplicate content through job feeds.
Now Website B is about 4-5 years old and has a great link graph but has been hit hard by Panda in which we recovered only to dive again. My question is, Website B is very close to having near perfect onpage SEO, hierarchy, etc. Could website A be effecting it in anyway?
If we assume that Website A is impacting B, what is the safest solution.... change servers and IP addresses? Change host entirely? Do I need to worry about whois?
Thank you!
-
I think what your asking, at a deeper level, if the really crappy SEO on site A can effect site B, through some form of administrative relationship. Is this correct? If there is a lot of questionable linking between the sites, you can see some negative effects. (if there is no linking relationship between the sites, then the answer is almost always no)
I agree with Alan completely that changing servers, IP address and all that doesn't effect the issue that those links still point to your website. Changing the host or other administrative associations of any of these sites likely would have zero impact on any penalties.
First, you want to determine if site A really is the problem. Is it Panda? Is it Penguin? Make sure to match up the dates of your traffic fluctuation with historical algorythm changes. http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
We seen a lot of site-wide cross linking, with over-optimized anchor text, as a key root of a lot of recent Penguin penalties.
All of these penalties have a lot of factors that could be the cause, so I'd make sure to look everywhere, including the links between the sites.
-
If Site A is a cash cow that does not need SEO, then I would block the entire site from search engines via robots.txt file. Even on separate hosts, all the links pointing to Site B are a big negative due to the sheer volume, given that there's likely a "bad rap" label associated with SEO on site A.
Duplicate content does not need a "same server" relationship to be a big problem either. All duplicate content is a problem regardless of location.
If a client I represent is doing things that I believe are impeding their success, I personally believe it's important to communicate my concern. However, if they choose to ignore that communication, that's their right to do so.
-
Honestly.. Site A is a Cash Cow that does not need SEO. I would love to clean it up, but there are external forces preventing that at the moment. These forces are not technical.
Site B is in the same industry as A, but with a different model and user. Both sites are pertient.
Let me simplify this question....
1.Can duplicate content effect more than just the root domain and spread across to other websites on the same IP range? and WHOIS?
2. Moreover does any SEO need to worry about what their clients are doing on sites that are out of their control (assuming no blackhat techniques)?
-
The question is this - why would you want to keep Site A given the current insurmountable challenge you describe?
Do you still hope there's some value in it being kept alive?
Do you still hope there's some SEO value or that the site will or does continue to bring some traffic you believe to be valuable?
Because (and this is just my opinion) if you are convinced you cannot or will not (for whatever reason) work to clean the mess up, you'd be better off completely killing off Site A.
If you don't even if you migrate site B to a different server, the links still exist. The footprint remains.
-
If You can't address them can you create a sitemap or robot that doesn't count them?
https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirect By IP location
Hi All, I have a client who operates in multiple countries with the sub directory structure. In AU for their main brand name .com site still ranks in the first position but /au ranks for most of the other terms. Current we have a 301 redirect in place for .com for anyone accessing the site from AU to /au. This is only for home pages as other .com pages don't rank in Australia. Just wondering what implication this can have on our SEO campaign. Cheers
Technical SEO | | SSP21
Thank you for your expertise and insights in advance.1 -
IP Change
Hello MOZ friends! We recently changed servers and subsequently had a change in IP. It's a better and faster server but have seen a significant drop in SERPS. Could this be a result of moving the site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Privacy: Is Whois info used to help establish an admin relationship between sites in addition to host/IP etc ?
Hi Do you think Google looks at WhoIs details as a contributing factor to establishing an adminsitrative relationship between two domains (in addition to being hosted on similar hosts/IP blocks etc), and in regard to linkbuilding would having teh same whois details on both sites have a negative effect or be perfectly ok (if the sites are on different hosts/ip blocks) ? Also do you think whois privacy turned on has a negative effect on trust and subsequent seo ? Considering the answer to the above two questions: Do you think its a good or bad idea to have domain reg/whois ‘privacy’ turned on for a site of curated content relating to the project/primary sites niche, and linking to this site for contextual link benefit ? Im building out a site of curated content that i want to perform well in-itself as well as providing backlink benefit to the primary site but worried if they both have same whois details will cause seo problems or would that only be if also had same host/ip footprint ? Should i enable whois privacy, use a different address for reg, or actually make a point of using the same whois details for transparency ? All Best
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Dan0 -
Exact Match Domain & Title Tag / URL
I currently own an exact match domain for my keyword. I have it set up with multiple pages and also a blog. The home page essentially serves as a hub and contains links to all the pages and the blog. My targeted keyword is on its own page and I made the title tag the same as my keyword. As an example the URL for my targeted post looks like this: benefitsofrunningshoes.com/benefits-of-running-shoes I have solid, non-spammy content and clean whitehat earned backlinks directing to that specific page. My concern right now is that the URL looks kinda spammy. The website has been live for about a week and the home page ranks well enough but my targeted page is no where to be found. (it does show up if I manually search via search command "site:benefitsofrunningshoes.com"). I'm wondering if it is acceptable to use the exact keyword in title tag / page url if it is also in the domain as an EMD? Should I change the title tag and leave the URL in? Or should I completely change the title tag and URL and 301 redirect to the new page? I appreciate any help!
Technical SEO | | Kusanagi170 -
Site's IP showing WMT 'Links to My Site'
I have been going through, disavowing spam links in WMT and one of my biggest referral sources is our own IP address. Site: Covers.com
Technical SEO | | evansluke
IP: 208.68.0.72 We have recently fixed a number of 302 redirects, but the number of links actually seems to be increasing. Is this something I should ignore / disavow / fix using a redirect?0 -
Ranking via partial match
If I wanted to rank for "red hot widgets" and my domain was redhot.com, would it be better to obtain backlinks (via "red hot widgets" anchor text) pointing to: A) redhot.com (homepage) or B) redhot.com/widgets Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc0 -
Using differing calls to action based on IP address
Hi, We have an issue with a particular channel on a lead generation site where we have sales staff requiring different quality of leads in different parts of the country. In saturated markets they require a stricter lead qualification process than those in more challenging markets. To combat the problem I am toying with the idea of severing very slightly different content based on IP address. The main change in content would be in terms of calls to action and lead qualification processes. We would plan to have a "standard" version of the site for when IP location can not be detected. URLs on this version would be the rel="canonical" for the location specific pages. Is there a way to do this without creating duplicate content, cloaking or other such issues on the site? Any advice, theories or case studies would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | SEM-Freak1 -
Why google index my IP URL
hi guys, a question please. if site:112.65.247.14 , you can see google index our website IP address, this could duplicate with our darwinmarketing.com content pages. i am not quite sure why google index my IP pages while index domain pages, i understand this could because of backlink, internal link and etc, but i don't see obvious issues there, also i have submit request to google team to remove ip address index, but seems no luck. Please do you have any other suggestion on this? i was trying to do change of address setting in Google Webmaster Tools, but didn't allow as it said "Restricted to root level domains only", any ideas? Thank you! boson
Technical SEO | | DarwinChinaSEO0