How cloudflare might affect "rank juice" on numerous domains due to limited IP range?

[MNoisy]

We have implemented quite a few large websites onto cloudflare and have been very happy with our results.  Since this has been successful so far, we have been considering putting some other companies on CL as well, but have some concerns due to the structure of their business and related websites.

The companies run multiple networks of technology, review, news, and informational websites.  All have good content (Almost all unique to each website) and rankings currently, but if implemented to cloudflare, would be sharing DNS and most likely IP's with eachother. Raising a concern of google reducing their link juice because it would be detected as if it was coming from the same server, such as people used to do for their blog farms.

For example, they might be tasked to write an article on XYZ company's new product.  A unique article would be generated for 5-10 websites, all with unique, informative, valid and relevant content to each domain; Including links, be it direct or contextual, to the XYZ product or website URL. To clarify, so there is no confusion...each article is relevant to its website...

technology website- artciel about the engineering of xyz product
business website - How xyz product is affecting the market or stock price
howto website - How the xyz product is properly used

Currently all sites are on different IP's and servers due to their size, but if routed through cloudflare, will Google simply detect this as duplicate linking efforts or some type of "black hat" effort since its coming from cloudflare?

If yes, is there a way to prevent this while still using CL?
If no, why and how is this different than someone doing this to trick google?

Thank you in advance! I look forward to some informative answers.

[MNoisy]

Thank you for some great information!  I am reading it over now!

The concern is not necessarily the page rank or da of the actual sites with the content linking to the other site, but that google might reduce or diminish the link juice of the actual links since they would likely detected as originating from the same server.

It might be 5-10 websites, original content...but not really something we can "test and see"

Thank you again!

[AlanMosley]

For a small number of sites I would not be concerned, but if you are worried, Try Microsoft Azure you get a unique ip for each website and they are very cheap with a great interface.

[vmialik]

Response updated

[MNoisy]

Where did you get that information for all sites being on different IP's? I ask because 3 of the sites we are using for some clients all are coming from the same IP or the same c block or range.

A better question might be if there is a way to ensure they are served from different IP's since we cannot risk it.

Side note, I am waiting for a response from CL as well and will post their info if relevant.

thanks!

[vmialik]

UPDATED/CLARIFICATION: Responding to your comment "Currently all sites are on different IP's and servers due to their size."

Your server IP addresses (A Records) will stay unique/same. The IP is masked by Cloudflare's Anycast using different IP addresses across the world, depending where used can be identical or in similar range. They cache static content with a short expiry time; for non-cached content their servers proxy through requests to the actual server then forward to a user.

See http://www.quora.com/CloudFlare/How-does-CloudFlare-work for a detailed response from CloudFlare's CEO to a similar question.

Now Google "should" first of all understand how Cloudflare works as a CDN just like it does with other similar CDNs and security platforms.

Does Google care about same IPs no, unless there are spammy neighbors using it:

“… there was recently a discussion on a NANOG (North American Network Operators Group) email list about virtual hosting vs. dedicated IP addresses. They were commenting on the misconception that having multiple sites hosted on the same IP address will in some way affect the PageRanks of those sites. There is no PageRank difference whatsoever between these two cases (virtual hosting vs. a dedicated IP).” Cutts Blog

Should Google figure this out and be able to differentiate the Cloudflare masking yes. But has Google been found with incorrectly diagnosing spam yes, with probably less complex issues to Cloudflare.  The question may be do you want to take the risk, or partial risk as you can actually use your own DNS and cloudflare (paid version) again hoping assuming Google will understand.

Hope this helps, curious as to how Cloudflare will respond to this, so please update. But as an SEO'r it would depend how much risk you want to take in this case.