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
-
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Should I use change of address when moving to subdomain
Hi guys So we had a domain that was only for one country, www.example.com 1 year later we decided to go to another country so we will have all the current website under a country subdomain like : ae.example.com we did a 301 redirect
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | awrikat
Should I perform a change of address action from www.example.com to ae.example.com ? please help
Thanks0 -
Moving to a new site while keeping old site live
For reasons I won't get into here, I need to move most of my site to a new domain (DOMAIN B) while keeping every single current detail on the old domain (DOMAIN A) as it is. Meaning, there will be 2 live websites that have mostly the same content, but I want the content to appear to search engines as though it now belongs to DOMAIN B. Weird situation. I know. I've run around in circles trying to figure out the best course of action. What do you think is the best way of going about this? Do I simply point DOMAIN A's canonical tags to the copied content on DOMAIN B and call it good? Should I ask sites that link to DOMAIN A to change their links to DOMAIN B, or start fresh and cut my losses? Should I still file a change of address with GWT, even though I'm not going to 301 redirect anything?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaniels0 -
SEO site Review
Does anyone have suggestions on places that provide in depth site / analytics reviews for SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gordian0 -
If I own a .com url and also have the same url with .net, .info, .org, will I want to point them to the .com IP address?
I have a domain, for example, mydomain.com and I purchased mydomain.net, mydomain.info, and mydomain.org. Should I point the host @ to the IP where the .com is hosted in wpengine? I am not doing anything with the .org, .info, .net domains. I simply purchased them to prevent competitors from buying the domains.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlittman0 -
Using both dofollow & nofollow links within the same blog site (but different post).
Hi all, I have been actively pursuing bloggers for my site in order to build page rank. My website sells women undergarments that are more on the exotic end. I noticed a large amount of prospective bloggers demand product samples. As already confirm, bloggers that are given "free" samples should use a rel=no follow attribute in their links. Unfortunately this does not build my page rank or transfer links juice. My question is this: is it advisable for them to also blog additional posts and include dofollow links? The idea is for the blogger to use a nofollow when posting about the sample and a regular link for a secondary post at a later time. What are you thoughts concerning this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Using WP All Import csv import plugin for wordpress to daily update products on large ecommerce site. Category naming and other issues.
We have just got an automated solution working to upload about 4000 products daily to our site. We get a CSV file from the wholesalers server each day and the way they have named products and categories is not ideal. Although most of the products remain the same (don't need to be over written) Some will go out of stock or prices may change etc. Problem is we have no control over the csv file so we need to keep the catagories they have given us. Might be able to create new catgories and have products listed under multiple categories? If anyone has used wp all import or has knoledge in this area please let me know. I have plenty more questions but this should start the ball rolling! Thanks in advance mozzers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weebro0 -
Multiple sites in the same niche
Hi All A question regarding multiple sites in the same niche... If I have say 10 sites all targetting the same niche yet all on different C-class IPs with different hosts, registrars, whois data and ages can I use the same template, or will Google discern a pattern? Basically I have developed a WordPress template which I want to use on the sites albeit with different logos / brand colours. NB/ All of the 10 sites will have unique, original content and they will NOT be interlinked
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielparry1