What is a Class C Subnet and why should I care?

[AaronParrish]

So I did a site analysis over at Majestic SEO and it told me that I have 100 Referring IP addresses and 92 are Class C subnets. What does this mean? Are they good, bad or irrelevant?

[MulberrySqCraig]

Pretty much all hosting companies offer dedicated ips but they are likely to be of the same class C subnet as ips are bought in blocks.

[bozzie311]

Any good hosting companies out there that help with offering the option to have each domain hosted on a different IP? I have only seen http://www.seohosting.com/ by host gator (I think).

[Thos003]

I feel that the IP of links is a fairly low ranking factor. But if all of your links were coming from the same IP then your site would be throwing up some red flags.

[itrogers]

I agree with this. The closer the IP addresses between sites that link to each other the more likely they are that the two sites have a relationship. Not that this is bad, it's just that links that you get from your relationships are usually easier to get than those that are freely and naturally given, so they discount them.

[Fatwallet]

Class C refers to the third set of numbers in an IP.
AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD

If all the links came from the same C subnet, they're 'likely' less trusted.

The 'theory' (calling it a theory because i don't think its ever really been proven) is that multiple links from the same C subnet are less valuable because its likely that they come from an owner of multiple websites.

I wouldn't label them as 'bad'

But if you're link building, it's probably a good idea to get links from different subnets