Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does my "spam" site affect my other sites on the same IP?
-
I have a link directory called Liberty Resource Directory. It's the main site on my dedicated IP, all my other sites are Addon domains on top of it.
While exploring the new MOZ spam ranking I saw that LRD (Liberty Resource Directory) has a spam score of 9/17 and that Google penalizes 71% of sites with a similar score. Fair enough, thin content, bunch of follow links (there's over 2,000 links by now), no problem. That site isn't for Google, it's for me.
Question, does that site (and linking to my own sites on it) negatively affect my other sites on the same IP? If so, by how much? Does a simple noindex fix that potential issues?
Bonus: How does one go about going through hundreds of pages with thousands of links, built with raw, plain text HTML to change things to nofollow? =/
-
@Tom Roberts, your thinking is about on the same page as mine. I've always been suspect of "C-Blocks" as a ranking too. I don't use a CMS for this site, as I said it's all hard coded. Does the nofollow tag in the head section have the same effect as a nofollow on individual links? At least PHP could solve that issue pretty easily.
-
Hi Ethan
In theory - yes it could. We know that Google looks at a domain's Class-C IP level (at least - now that Google is a registrar it may extend to the full IP) when judging its quality. If a site is in a "bad neighbourhood" - ie sitting on an IP range with a number of 'spam' sites - then theoretically it could be affected, as a kind of guilty by association.
However, in reality I have some doubts as to whether this would happen. The fact is that the vast majority of the web uses shared hosting (particularly sme's) and so good sites are invariably always going to be mixed in with 'bad' sites. And what's stopping me from deliberately making a bad site on your IP in order to 'poison it'? I'm no way near that evil, but someone might be.
What I'm getting at here is that it seems extremely unlikely that there is a manageable way to differentiate these sites efficiently - which leads me to believe that having your spam site on the same IP as some 'good' sites _shouldn't _make a difference.
What you can do to reduce this risk even further would be to make sure the 'spam' site doesn't link to any properties of yours that you want to protect, to nofollow those links if feasible (not sure what CMS you're using but WordPress has a few plugins that would do this on bulk) and, if it isn't required, noindexing the site would pretty much get rid of all risk completely.
Hope this helps!
-
If you don't use the site in Google, you should noindex it just to clear up any potential issues (especially if the domains link together in any way.)
- Bonus: How does one go about going through hundreds of pages with thousands of links, built with raw, plain text HTML to change things to nofollow? =/
Download the full site and open all the pages in Notepad++. Find & replace. Save, reupload.
-
Hi Ethan,
I will say yes & no. Please watch below Matt cutts video on the exact issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsSwqo16C8s&noredirect=1
I hope it helps.
Thanks
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
-
Page with "random" content
Hi, I'm creating a page of 300+ in the near future, on which the content basicly will be unique as it can be. However, upon every refresh, also coming from a search engine refferer, i want the actual content such as listing 12 business to be displayed random upon every hit. So basicly we got 300+ nearby pages with unique content, and the overview of those "listings" as i might say, are being displayed randomly. Ive build an extensive script and i disabled any caching for PHP files in specific these pages, it works. But what about google? The content of the pages will still be as it is, it is more of the listings that are shuffled randomly to give every business listing a fair shot at a click and so on. Anyone experience with this? Ive tried a few things in the past, like a "Last update PHP Month" in the title which sometimes is'nt picked up very well.
Technical SEO | | Vanderlindemedia0 -
What is the difference between "Referring Pages" and "Total Backlinks" [on Ahrefs]?
I always thought they were essentially the same thing myself but appears there may be a difference? Any one care to help me out? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Staging site and "live" site have both been indexed by Google
While creating a site we forgot to password protect the staging site while it was being built. Now that the site has been moved to the new domain, it has come to my attention that both the staging site (site.staging.com) and the "live" site (site.com) are both being indexed. What is the best way to solve this problem? I was thinking about adding a 301 redirect from the staging site to the live site via HTACCESS. Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | melen0 -
Use webmaster tools "change of address" when doing rel=canonical
We are doing a "soft migration" of a website. (Actually it is a merger of two websites). We are doing cross site rel=canonical tags instead of 301's for the first 60-90 days. These have been done on a page by page basis for an entire site. Google states that a "change of address" should be done in webmaster tools for a site migration with 301's. Should this also be done when we are doing this soft move?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0 -
NoIndex/NoFollow pages showing up when doing a Google search using "Site:" parameter
We recently launched a beta version of our new website in a subdomain of our existing site. The existing site is www.fonts.com with the beta living at new.fonts.com. We do not want Google to crawl the new site until it's out of beta so we have added the following on all pages: However, one of our team members noticed that google is displaying results from new.fonts.com when doing an "site:new.fonts.com" search (see attached screenshot). Is it possible that Google is indexing the content despite the noindex, nofollow tags? We have double checked the syntax and it seems correct except the trailing "/". I know Google still crawls noindexed pages, however, the fact that they're showing up in search results using the site search syntax is unsettling. Any thoughts would be appreciated! DyWRP.png
Technical SEO | | ChrisRoberts-MTI0 -
Rel="external"
Hi all, I got a link and its off a site and marked up with rel="external". Is this a followed or nofollowed link? Does it pass link juice? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Sharer0 -
How to block "print" pages from indexing
I have a fairly large FAQ section and every article has a "print" button. Unfortunately, this is creating a page for every article which is muddying up the index - especially on my own site using Google Custom Search. Can you recommend a way to block this from happening? Example Article: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/idx.php/11/183/Maintenance-of-Mature-Locks-6-months-/article/How-do-I-get-sand-out-of-my-dreads.html Example "Print" page: http://www.knottyboy.com/lore/article.php?id=052&action=print
Technical SEO | | dreadmichael0 -
Google.ca is showing our US site instead of our Canada Site
When our Canadian users who search on google.ca for our brand (e.g. Travelocity, Travelocity hotels, etc.), the first few results our from our US site (travelocity.com) rather than our Canadian site (travelocity.ca). In Google Webmaster Tools, we've adjusted the geotargeting settings to focus on the appropriate locale, but the wrong country TLD is still coming up at the top via google.ca. What's the best way to ensure our Canadian site comes up instead of the US site on google.ca? Thanks, Tory Smith
Technical SEO | | travelocitysearch
Travelocity0