Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Multiple Domains on 1 IP Address

    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.

    Multiple Domains on 1 IP Address

    Technical SEO
    6
    8
    9816
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Motivators
      Motivators last edited by

      We have multiple domains on the same C Block IP Address. Our main site is an eCommerce site, and we have separate domains for each of the following: our company blog (and other niche blogs), forum site, articles site and corporate site. They are all on the same server and hosted by the same web-hosting company.

      They all have unique and different content. Speaking strictly from a technical standpoint, could this be hurting us? Can you please make a recommendation for the best practices when it comes to multiple domains like these and having separate or the same IP Addresses?

      Thank you!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dr-Pete
        Dr-Pete Staff @Jade last edited by

        Sorry, I'm confused about the setup. Hosts routinely run multiple sites off of shared IPs, but each domain name resolves as itself. Users and search bots should never see that redirection at all and shouldn't be crawling the IPs. This isn't an SEO issue so much as a setup issue. Likewise, any rel=canonical tags on each site would be tied to that site's specific domain name.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • Jade
          Jade last edited by

          Hello Peter,

          We have three sites hosted on the same server with the same IP address. For SEO (to avoid duplicate content) reasons we need to redirect the IP address to the site - but there are three different sites. If we use the "rel canonical" code on the websites, these codes will be duplicates too, as the websites are mirrored versions of the sites with IP address, e.g. www.domainname.com/product-page and 23.34.45.99/product-page. What's the best ways to solve these duplicate content issues in this case? Many thanks!

          Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Dr-Pete
            Dr-Pete Staff @MikePatch last edited by

            I think that situation's a bit different - if you aren't interlinking and the sites are very different (your site vs. customer sites), there's no harm in shared hosting. If you share the IP and one site is hit with a severe penalty, there's a small chance of bleedover, but we don't even see that much these days. Now that we're running out of IPv4 addresses, shared IPs are a lot more common (by necessity).

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • MikePatch
              MikePatch last edited by

              I have something similar. I'm with Hostgator, I have a VPS level 5. It comes with 4 IP address's and I have about 15 sites, some mine, some customer sites spread out over the addresses. There is very little interlinking between the sites but I was concerned too. I have read that Add-on sites are bad for SEO, but as long as you arent feature building crappy sites and linking them to your main site, should be fine.

              Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Dr-Pete
                Dr-Pete Staff last edited by

                I think @cgman and @Nakul are both right, to a point. Technically, it's fine. Google doesn't penalize shared IPs (they're fairly common). If you're cross-linking your sites, though, it's very likely Google will devalue those links. That tactic has just been abused too much, and a shared IP is a dead giveaway.

                Now, is it worth splitting all these out to gain a little more link-juice? In most cases, probably not. Google knows you own the sites, and may devalue them anyway. Chances are, they've already been devalued a bit. So, I don't think it's worth hours and hours and thousands of dollars to give them all their own homes, in most cases (it is highly situational, though).

                The only other potential problem is if one site were penalized - there have been cases where that impacted sites on the same IP, especially cross-linked sites. It's not common, and you may not be at any risk, but it's not unheard of. As @Nakul said, it's a risk calculation.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                • NakulGoyal
                  NakulGoyal last edited by

                  I am presuming all those domains are linking to each other, correct ?

                  Are they regular or nofollow links ? It boils down how much authority you have on your main domain as well as the other domains. If I were you, I will keep the main e-commerce website on one server and everything else including niche blogs etc on a different server. It's not just SEO, but also security issues.

                  Essentially, to answer your question, it may not be hurting you to have the niche blogs, a forum with user generated content, the articles site and the corporate site on the same IP/server, but it would help you a lot more if they were on a different server, possibly different Class C IPs. So, you will gain from these links being on a different server. Keep in mind, these links are important for you and its good to increase their value by hosting them separately, because these sites are links that your competition can never get linked from. I would also consider doing a nofollow on them, and that's just my thoughts. I prefer lower risk. Again, it depends on what your e-commerce website's link profile is.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • cgman
                    cgman last edited by

                    There is nothing wrong with having multiple sites / blogs on the same C block IP address. However, if you're trying to use your blogs to link to your products to boost SEO scores then you might want to consider other link building techniques in addition. Building backlinks from sites on same IP is okay, but you'll have greater benefits getting links from sites hosted on other servers.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      Last post

                    Got a burning SEO question?

                    Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                    Start my free trial


                    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.

                    • See all categories

                    Related Questions

                    • AKCAC

                      GoogleBot still crawling HTTP/1.1 years after website moved to HTTP/2

                      google http https indexation crawl

                      Whole website moved to https://www. HTTP/2 version 3 years ago. When we review log files, it is clear that - for the home page - GoogleBot continues to only access via HTTP/1.1 protocol Robots file is correct (simply allowing all and referring to https://www. sitemap Sitemap is referencing https://www. pages including homepage Hosting provider has confirmed server is correctly configured to support HTTP/2 and provided evidence of accessing via HTTP/2 working 301 redirects set up for non-secure and non-www versions of website all to https://www. version Not using a CDN or proxy GSC reports home page as correctly indexed (with https://www. version canonicalised) but does still have the non-secure version of website as the referring page in the Discovery section. GSC also reports homepage as being crawled every day or so. Totally understand it can take time to update index, but we are at a complete loss to understand why GoogleBot continues to only go through HTTP/1.1 version not 2 Possibly related issue - and of course what is causing concern - is that new pages of site seem to index and perform well in SERP ... except home page. This never makes it to page 1 (other than for brand name) despite rating multiples higher in terms of content, speed etc than other pages which still get indexed in preference to home page. Any thoughts, further tests, ideas, direction or anything will be much appreciated!

                      Technical SEO | | AKCAC
                      1
                    • AL123al

                      Old domain to new domain

                      Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B  -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website.  I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help

                      Technical SEO | | AL123al
                      0
                    • AubbiefromAubenRealty

                      Multiple H1 Tags on Page

                      Can having multiple H1 tags on a webpage be detrimental to its rankings?

                      Technical SEO | | AubbiefromAubenRealty
                      0
                    • timfrick

                      Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain

                      Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.

                      Technical SEO | | timfrick
                      0
                    • allstatetransmission

                      Robots.txt and Multiple Sitemaps

                      Hello, I have a hopefully simple question but I wanted to ask to get a "second opinion" on what to do in this situation. I am working on a clients robots.txt and we have multiple sitemaps. Using yoast I have my sitemap_index.xml and I also have a sitemap-image.xml I do put them in google and bing by hand but wanted to have it added into the robots.txt for insurance. So my question is, when having multiple sitemaps called out on a robots.txt file does it matter if one is before the other? From my reading it looks like you can have multiple sitemaps called out, but I wasn't sure the best practice when writing it up in the file. Example: User-agent: * Disallow: Disallow: /cgi-bin/ Disallow: /wp-admin/ Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/ Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap_index.xml Sitemap: http://sitename.com/sitemap-image.xml Thanks a ton for the feedback, I really appreciate it! :) J

                      Technical SEO | | allstatetransmission
                      0
                    • AlexSG

                      Rel canonical between mirrored domains

                      Hi all & happy new near! I'm new to SEO and could do with a spot of advice: I have a site that has several domains that mirror it (not good, I know...)  So www.site.com, www.site.edu.sg, www.othersite.com all serve up the same content.  I was planning to use rel="canonical" to avoid the duplication but I have a concern: Currently several of these mirrors rank - one, the .com ranks #1 on local google search for some useful keywords. the .edu.sg also shows up as #9 for a dirrerent page. In some cases I have multiple mirrors showing up on a specific serp. I would LIKE to rel canonical everything to the local edu.sg domain since this is most representative of the fact that the site is for a school in Singapore but...
                      -The .com is listed in DMOZ (this used to be important) and none of the volunteers there ever respoded to requests to update it to the .edu.sg
                      -The .com ranks higher than the com.sg page for non-local search so I am guessing google has some kind of algorithm to mark down obviosly local domains in other geographic locations Any opinions on this? Should I rel canonical the .com to the .edu.sg or vice versa? I appreciate any advice or opinion before I pull the trigger and end up shooting myself in the foot! Best regards from Singapore!

                      Technical SEO | | AlexSG
                      0
                    • zeepartner

                      Block Domain in robots.txt

                      Hi. We had some URLs that were indexed in Google from a www1-subdomain. We have now disabled the URLs (returning a 404 - for other reasons we cannot do a redirect from www1 to www) and blocked via robots.txt. But the amount of indexed pages keeps increasing (for 2 weeks now). Unfortunately, I cannot install Webmaster Tools for this subdomain to tell Google to back off... Any ideas why this could be and whether it's normal? I can send you more domain infos by personal message if you want to have a look at it.

                      Technical SEO | | zeepartner
                      0
                    • AscendLearning

                      Transfer a Main Domain to a Sub-Domain

                      My IT department tells me they want to transfer my main site domain, which has been in existence since 1999 as an e-commerce site (maindomain.com) to a sub-domain (www2.maindomain.com) or a completely new domain (newdomain.net). This is because we are launching a new website and B2C e-commerce engine, but we still have to maintain the legacy B2B e-commerce engine which contains hard-coded URLs, and both systems can't use the same domain. I've been researching the issue across SEOmoz, but I haven't come across this exact type of scenario (mostly I've seen a sub-domain to new domain). I see major problems with their proposal, including negative SEO impact, loss of domain authority/ranking and issues with branding. Does anyone know the exact type of impact I can expect to see in this scenario and specific steps I should go about to minimize the impact? Btw, I will be using Danny Dover's guide on properly moving domains where appropriate. Thanks!

                      Technical SEO | | AscendLearning
                      0

                    Get started with Moz Pro!

                    Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                    Start my free trial
                    Products
                    • Moz Pro
                    • Moz Local
                    • Moz API
                    • Moz Data
                    • STAT
                    • Product Updates
                    Moz Solutions
                    • SMB Solutions
                    • Agency Solutions
                    • Enterprise Solutions
                    • Digital Marketers
                    Free SEO Tools
                    • Domain Authority Checker
                    • Link Explorer
                    • Keyword Explorer
                    • Competitive Research
                    • Brand Authority Checker
                    • Local Citation Checker
                    • MozBar Extension
                    • MozCast
                    Resources
                    • Blog
                    • SEO Learning Center
                    • Help Hub
                    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                    • How-to Guides
                    • Moz Academy
                    • API Docs
                    About Moz
                    • About
                    • Team
                    • Careers
                    • Contact
                    Why Moz
                    • Case Studies
                    • Testimonials
                    Get Involved
                    • Become an Affiliate
                    • MozCon
                    • Webinars
                    • Practical Marketer Series
                    • MozPod
                    Connect with us

                    Contact the Help team

                    Join our newsletter
                    Moz logo
                    © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                    • Accessibility
                    • Terms of Use
                    • Privacy

                    Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.