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.
What IP Address does Googlebot use to read your site when coming from an external backlink?
-
Hi All,
I'm trying to find more information on what IP address Googlebot would use when arriving to crawl your site from an external backlink.
I'm under the impression Googlebot uses international signals to determine the best IP address to use when crawling (US / non-US) and then carries on with that IP when it arrives to your website?
E.g. - Googlebot finds www.example.co.uk. Due to the ccTLD, it decides to crawl the site with a UK IP address rather than a US one. As it crawls this UK site, it finds a subdirectory backlink to your website and continues to crawl your website with the aforementioned UK IP address.
Is this a correct assumption, or does Googlebot look at altering the IP address as it enters a backlink / new domain?
Also, are ccTLDs the main signals to determine the possibility of Google switching to an international IP address to crawl, rather than the standard US one? Am I right in saying that hreflang tags don't apply here at all, as their purpose is to be used in SERPS and helping Google to determine which page to serve to users based on their IP etc.
If anyone has any insight this would be great.
-
There's a few things you need to marry up if you want to do this. You need the referring page or domain / hostname (to validate that the session came from a backlink you know about). Once you filter the data down like that, you just need to filter by user-agent ("googlebot" - or any user-agent string which contains "googlebot"). Then you just want to look at the IP address field in the tabular data and you have your answers!
Here's the problem, most IP-level data is contained within basic server-side analysis packages (like AWStats which is installed on most sites, within the cPanel) or alternatively you can go to the log files for much of the same data. Most referrer-level data (stuff that deals with attribution) is contained within Analytics suites like Adobe Omniture or Google Analytics.
In GA, you can't usually get to 'individual' IP-level data. There used to be a URL hack to force it to render, but it was killed off (and many people who used it were banned by Google). The reason for that is, Google don't want too much PID (Personally Identifiable Data) harvested by their tool. It creates too many legal issues for Google (and also, whomever is leveraging that data for potentially nefarious marketing purposes)
Since you won't get enough IP-level data from GA, you're going to have to go to log files and log analysis tools instead. Hopefully they will contain at least some referral level data... The issue is, getting all the pieces you want to align in a legally compliant way
Obviously you have your reasons for looking. I'd check if you can find anything on your CPanel in AWStats (if that's installed) or get the log files and analyse them with something like Screaming Frog Log File Analyser
I can't promise this will return the data you want, but it's probably your only hope
-
Hi,
First of all "Google crawls from many IPs and they have confirmed that they do periodically add new ones. And there are also various Googlebot useragents, not just the regular one. This is why Google doesn't publish a list of all the IPs, because there are so many of them and they can change" .
You can see full conversation here @ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/4fKthSy7oFQ/GgslLXJnDQAJ
Second Today Google says "IP Addresses Don't Matter For Backlinks & Search Rankings"
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ip-addresses-backlinks-rankings-26561.html
Hope this 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
-
Site Migration - Pagination
Hi, We are migrating our website and an issue we are facing is how to handle paginated content in our categories. Our new website will have the same structure but with different urls. Should we 301 redirect all the paginated content (if crawled by Google) to the url of the main category? To put this into an example: Old urls: www.example.com/technology/tvs (main category of TVs & also page 1) ** www.example.com/technology/tvs?v=0&page=2 ** ( page 2 of TVs) New urls: **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs **(main category of TVs & also page 1) **www.example.com/soundvision/tvs?page=2 **(page 2 of tvs) Should we redirect all of the old TV urls (also the paginated) to www.example.com/soundvision/tvs ? The is no rel next, prev tag in our site and no canonicals. Also there is a view all products page in each category, BUT it doesn't contain all the products(max. is 100 per page - yes the view all page is also paginated). The same view all products page (paginated) will exist in the new website also. I checked google search console, and Google has decided to treat as canonical page the first page www.example.com/technology/tvs . Also, all the organic traffic of our categories goes to these pages (main category page - 1st page). I would appreciate any thoughts on this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 22, 2019, 11:24 AM | HellasSITES0 -
Different content on the same URL depending on the IP address of the visitor
Hi! Does anybody have any expierence on the SEO impact when changing the content of a page depending on the IP address of the visitor? Would be text content as well as meta information. This happening on the same URL. Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 26, 2019, 2:00 PM | Schoellerallibert0 -
Can Google read content that is hidden under a "Read More" area?
For example, when a person first lands on a given page, they see a collapsed paragraph but if they want to gather more information they press the "read more" and it expands to reveal the full paragraph. Does Google crawl the full paragraph or just the shortened version? In the same vein, what if you have a text box that contains three different tabs. For example, you're selling a product that has a text box with overview, instructions & ingredients tabs all housed under the same URL. Does Google crawl all three tabs? Thanks for your insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 5, 2016, 9:38 AM | jlo76130 -
When doing a site search my homepage comes up second. Does that matter?
When I do a site: search the homepage comes up second. Does this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 22, 2015, 7:31 PM | EcommerceSite0 -
Using Canonical URL to poin to an external page
I was wondering if I can use a canonical URL that points to a page residing on external site? So a page like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 9, 2014, 2:37 PM | llamb
www.site1.com/whatever.html will have a canonical link in its header to www.site2.com/whatever.html. Thanks.0 -
Do I need to use rel="canonical" on pages with no external links?
I know having rel="canonical" for each page on my website is not a bad practice... but how necessary is it for pages that don't have any external links pointing to them? I have my own opinions on this, to be fair - but I'd love to get a consensus before I start trying to customize which URLs have/don't have it included. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 31, 2013, 12:14 AM | Netrepid0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 2, 2012, 4:47 PM | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Badges For a B2b site
love this seo tactic but it seems hard to get people to adopt it Has anyone seen a successful badge campaign for a b2b site? please provide examples if you can.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 31, 2011, 2:23 PM | DavidKonigsberg0